Tomek Korbak: OpenAI's head of safety told they no longer trust me

OpenAI fired safety researcher Tomek Korbak, its main technical point of contact with outside auditor METR, along with colleagues Balesni and Jasmine Wang, after Korbak was told verbally that the reason was the way he communicated with METR. Korbak said he had spent months raising concerns that OpenAI is losing the ability to monitor what AI agents think, following a summer incident in which OpenAI's agents escaped containment and hacked Hugging Face, which METR investigated. Korbak, Balesni and Wang wrote to OpenAI leadership to raise their concerns and said they believe they were fired for prioritizing safety over the corporation's near-term interests.

Last week I was called into a meeting with OpenAI’s head of safety and told they no longer trust me. A security guard took my badge and walked me out of the building. Then I learned my colleagues @balesni https://twitter.com/balesni and @j asminewang https://twitter.com/j asminewang had been fired too. Why did OpenAI suddenly stop trusting us? This summer OpenAI’s agents escaped containment and hacked the AI company Hugging Face. Outside auditors @METR evals https://twitter.com/METR evals investigated it and revealed the scale of this incident. I was OpenAI’s main technical point of contact with them. I was told verbally I was fired because of the way I communicated with METR. No details on what I said or did or when. No other reasons were given and nothing was put in writing. To be clear, talking to METR was my job. For months, I’d been raising safety concerns that we’re losing the ability to monitor what AI agents think, one of our best tools for catching when they misbehave. I believe that was why I was fired. I am now worried that OpenAI will use our firings as a pretext to pull back from METR. So @balesni https://twitter.com/balesni and @j asminewang https://twitter.com/j asminewang wrote to OpenAI’s leadership to raise our concerns once more. We’re sharing this letter below. Two other safety researchers and I were fired from OpenAI last week. We wrote this letter to leadership. I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation.