Fired OpenAI safety employees write to oversight committee, saying OpenAI cannot ensure AI safety on its own

In a joint open letter, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang, and Mikita Balesni said that their firings and the way they were handled are making OpenAI safety researchers worry about the boundaries of external collaboration and raising objections. They denied being the source of The Information's report on harder-to-monitor architectures, and explained the collaboration with external institutions and the incident involving authorization of executive email accounts. The three called on OpenAI to continue its commitment to third-party safety evaluation collaboration, protect the monitorability of frontier models, and clarify procedures for employees collaborating with external safety institutions. The open letter was addressed to the Safety and Security Committee, the Safety Advisory Group, and the Mission Advisory Council.