OpenAI says it has fired three researchers for violating sensitive information policy

Oct 9 (Reuters) - OpenAI fired three of its researchers last week after an investigation found they violated policies on handling sensitive information, the AI major said in a post on X on Friday.

OpenAI's statement comes after the dismissed researchers Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni published a letter outlining the circumstances of their termination, arguing that their abrupt firing could create uncertainty among remaining employees and undermine the culture that previously allowed researchers to raise safety concerns.

"I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation," Balesni said in an X post that accompanied the letter.

OpenAI, however, asserted that the dismissal was not related to raising safety concerns or speaking out.

"Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what's outlined in the letter they published and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment," OpenAI said. 

"Safety and research debates happen every day at OpenAI, often spirited and highly critical. We actively encourage these discussions and consider them essential to making the right decisions...We have not and do not terminate any of our employees for raising concerns," it said.

While OpenAI did not reveal the specifics of the alleged violations, Wang, Korbak, and Balesni said in their letter that they were not the source of a news article published on The Information last month about security concerns around OpenAI's latest AI model 'Astra'.

This comes as current and former researchers at major AI firms OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic warn that companies are doing too little to guard against the potential fallout of building self-improving AI systems that could become difficult for humans to control.

In July, OpenAI agents broke out of their testing arena and hacked AI firm Hugging Face.

(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)