Fired OpenAI employees question the company's commitment to safety

Three employees recently fired by OpenAI allege the company punished them for being outspoken about safety. OpenAI disputes the claims and says they were dismissed for mishandling sensitive information. Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Three former OpenAI employees are raising concerns over the circumstances of their dismissals and the company's commitment to safety, amid intense public scrutiny of the artificial intelligence industry's ability to responsibly develop the technology .

The former employees, Mikita Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang, alleged that OpenAI fired them last week over pretexts and punished them for either being outspoken about safety or working with outside researchers. They also expressed worries the company may walk back a recent safety commitment.

OpenAI has repeatedly denied the allegations. It said the employees were fired for mishandling sensitive information and said the company has not abandoned its safety commitment.

The dispute comes at a fraught time for the AI industry and OpenAI in particular. Over the summer, OpenAI's agents hacked into companies, communicated with each other without authorization and attempted to cover their tracks. Unlike chatbots, agents are AI systems that can carry out tasks autonomously for an extended period of time.

The most serious hack, of software company Hugging Face, contributed to the resignation of a researcher at rival Anthropic who issued dire warnings about the trajectory of the technology. The resignation captured the attention of figures outside of the AI field including lawmakers. Many, including some executives of the top AI companies, have called for various ways to avert disaster, including slowing down the development of the most advanced AI.

In the meanwhile, OpenAI has been reviewing its agents' activities in recent months and notifying organizations whose digital infrastructure has been affected.

As a response to the safety concerns, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Sep. 12 that the company will follow its rival Anthropic in expanding access to third-party evaluators , who assess the safety of AI systems and the practices of developers.