“OpenAI Fires Three Safety Researchers” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) · Oct 13, 2026 · 45m

Three OpenAI safety researchers, Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni and Jasmine Wang, were fired, ostensibly for ‘mishandling sensitive company information.’

Those employees have published an open letter. The employees have said they believe they were fired for safety advocacy, and that the reasons given were pretextual.

The letter calls upon OpenAI to take actions going forward on open discussion and safety auditing, which OpenAI says they strongly support.

OpenAI responded, saying there was an additional breach of trust that was not mentioned in the employee statements, without claiming that the…