The Signal chat logs that led to three OpenAI safety researchers being fired
Los chats de Signal que costaron el puesto a tres investigadores de OpenAI
OpenAI fired three AI safety researchers for violating its sensitive information handling policy; the three deny leaking confidential information and question that reason. According to The Wall Street Journal, last month OpenAI's safety team asked Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni and Jasmine Wang to unlock their personal phones, and found that some of them had turned on disappearing messages in a Signal conversation with external researcher Ryan Greenblatt; a week later the three were fired. Korbak said he was told the reason was contact with third parties through unauthorized channels, and Wang said she was told the reason was repeatedly viewing an executive's mailbox. OpenAI said the firings were unrelated to their expressing views on safety issues. The three had previously advocated keeping model chain of thought visible, and worried this would weaken independent third-party oversight; the article also mentioned that Anthropic gave METR researchers system access close to that of employees, and METR said OpenAI had cut some of the results it could share.
The report reconstructs how three safety researchers were fired and, set against Anthropic's arrangement to open internal systems to METR, shows how the lab draws the boundaries of external sharing.