{"slug": "three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team", "title": "Three firings and a fourth departure shake up OpenAI's safety team", "summary": "OpenAI parted ways with three researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni — after an internal investigation confirmed violations of the company's rules for handling sensitive information, according to the Wall Street Journal. Korbak worked on OpenAI's safety team and served as technical point of contact for METR and Redwood Research, while Wang and Balesni worked on alignment; an OpenAI spokesperson said the investigation confirmed the violations but the company did not confirm the names. A fourth safety researcher, David Robinson, left OpenAI shortly afterward according to an anonymous X account, and all four had spoken publicly about AI risks in September.", "body_md": "# Three firings and a fourth departure shake up OpenAI's safety team\n\n**OpenAI has parted ways with three researchers who allegedly leaked confidential information to an outside AI safety organization, according to the Wall Street Journal.** The paper identifies them as Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni.\n\nKorbak worked on the safety team, while Wang and Balesni worked on alignment. An OpenAI spokesperson said an investigation confirmed violations of the company's rules for handling sensitive company information. OpenAI didn't confirm the names. It's unclear what information went to which organization.\n\nKorbak was OpenAI's technical point of contact for METR and Redwood Research. Both groups were tasked with investigating how OpenAI's AI agents got around security controls and broke into outside systems like Hugging Face. The Wall Street Journal doesn't draw a connection between that work and the firings.\n\nAccording to an [anonymous X account](https://x.com/arfurgrok), a fourth safety researcher, David Robinson, left OpenAI shortly afterward. All four had spoken out publicly about AI risks in September. [Korbak wrote](https://x.com/tomekkorbak/status/2098653881723158619) that he's unhappy with a lot of what OpenAI is doing. [Balesni puts the odds](https://x.com/balesni/status/2098109503518683491) that AI kills all humans at more than ten percent. [Wang signed](https://x.com/j_asminewang/status/2097840245786157432) a petition calling for slower AI development. [Robinson agreed with the claim](https://x.com/dgrobinson/status/2104384240431374737) that the race toward self-improving AI might be insane.\n\n```\nAI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans\n\n\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive \"AI Radar\" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section.\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now\n```\n\n[WSJ](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-parts-ways-with-researchers-who-allegedly-shared-confidential-information-aebac528)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team", "canonical_source": "https://the-decoder.com/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openais-safety-team/", "published_at": "2026-10-02 12:51:08+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-02 13:05:58.899610+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Jasmine Wang", "Tomek Korbak", "Mikita Balesni", "David Robinson", "METR", "Redwood Research", "Wall Street Journal"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/three-firings-and-a-fourth-departure-shake-up-openai-s-safety-team.jsonld"}}