Fired OpenAI safety researchers ask the board to drop models whose reasoning is hard to check
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
If a model is required to think only in ways people can read at every step, it will lose some of its freedom to reason and grow.
Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, whom OpenAI fired on October 1, sent the board a letter (October 7) asking the company and its competitors to stop developing models whose reasoning is hard to monitor and audit, and saying the firings created an oppressive atmosphere for remaining staff. According to the WSJ, OpenAI explained the firings by saying an internal investigation found sensitive data, including infrastructure architecture, had been passed on; the letter's authors reply that they never exceeded their duties: Korbak was a technical contact for METR and Balesni helped the board draft an industry safety pledge. OpenAI denies any link between the firings and the staff raising safety issues.
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