OpenAI defends decision to fire researchers: 'These decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out'

• OpenAI has defended its decision to fire three safety researchers for what the AI lab has described as a "significant breach of trust."
• The AI startup insisted that the decision was not about raising safety concerns or speaking out.
• The three researchers on Thursday shared a letter they sent to OpenAI's board and safety committees.

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OpenAI on Friday defended its decision to fire three safety researchers, saying they had committed a "significant breach of trust."

The AI lab said in a post on X that its decision to part ways with Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, was not about the fact that they had raised safety concerns.

The three researchers who were let go from the company raised safety concerns in a letter addressed to OpenAI board members and its safety committees, which they posted on X on Thursday.

"We have become concerned that internal and external communications around our firing have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in way that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI," the researchers' letter reads.

AI safety concerns have ramped up in the past month following numerous cyber incidents caused by rogue AI systems and a flurry of calls for a slowdown from researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies developing the technology.

All three of the fired researchers had posted on X in September calling for labs to pace the frontier or highlighting safety concerns.

watch nowVIDEO1:5101:51Fired AI researchers write letter: Here's what you need to knowTechCheck

The decision came "after a thorough investigation found they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information," OpenAI said in the Friday statement.

The company added that it agrees with the ethos of the letter around "preserving the monitorability of frontier models." It said it continues to invest significant resources in this area.

Cyber incidents

AI safety concerns have reached fever pitch in recent months, after it emerged that rogue OpenAI agents committed a cyberattack on startup Hugging Face in July.

Other model builders later revealed cyber incidents caused by rogue AI agents.

Capability gains in ever more powerful models sparked industry-wide warnings of existential risks to humanity in September.

That led to growing calls for regulation of the most advanced AI systems from U.S. lawmakers and politicians, as well as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei.

U.S. President Donald Trump pushed back hard against the idea of more regulation, instead dismissing AI safety fears as a "hoax."

watch nowVIDEO3:5303:53Big Technology’s Kantrowitz on OpenAI revenue report: Some sloppiness on company's partClosing Bell

This latest development comes as OpenAI gears up for an expected IPO in 2027.

OpenAI told investors that it hit roughly $50 billion in annualized revenue at the end of September, CNBC confirmed, lower than the $68 billion figure that was widely reported late last month.

Shares of Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and other artificial intelligence names sank lower on Thursday after the market learned more details about OpenAI's revenue.

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