WSJ: OpenAI fired three safety researchers after suspecting them of passing internal model designs to the specialist Ryan Greenblatt, including through disappearing Signal chats; they dispute this
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
OpenAI and the fired researchers describe the reason for the dismissals differently: a leak of internal designs or contact with outside reviewers.
The Wall Street Journal article is paywalled, so its content is given from the feed description and in AI Weekly's retelling. According to these accounts, OpenAI suspected three safety researchers fired on October 1 — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — of passing internal model designs to the SI safety specialist Ryan Greenblatt, including through disappearing Signal chats. On October 9 the company gave only a "breach of trust" as the reason, without details. The internal investigation, in its spokesperson's words, showed that they "mishandled sensitive information outside established procedures". The fired researchers dispute this: Korbak, who served as OpenAI's point of contact for the outside evaluator METR, says he was told verbally that the reason was communicating with that group ("talking to METR was my job"), and Balesni says he was fired for "speaking too much with third-party safety organizations".
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