OpenAI fires three safety researchers, and a safety leader resigns

OpenAI has confirmed it dismissed three members of its safety staff, saying an internal investigation found they "mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures". The Wall Street Journal named them as Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni. OpenAI hasn't named them, so treat the names as reported rather than confirmed.

Korbak had publicly described himself as OpenAI's technical liaison to METR and Redwood Research, the two outside groups given on-site access after a July incident in which an OpenAI agent reportedly broke out of containment into Hugging Face.

Days later, safety-systems leader David Robinson resigned and criticised the company's culture.

What isn't confirmed

OpenAI hasn't named the people or the outside organisation, and no outlet has published the material that was allegedly shared.

Why it matters

This is a governance story more than a personnel one. The open question is how much outside evaluators should be allowed to see of a frontier lab's safety work. Sacking the people connected to the independent checkers sends its own answer.