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• Thursday, Oct 8Week 41

  Balesni and fellow fired OpenAI researchers Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang published a letter titled OpenAI cannot make AI safe on its own, warning that As an industry, we do not yet know how to safely develop and deploy models that we cannot monitor.

  The three worked on monitoring OpenAI's models and were fired in late September; OpenAI says for mishandling sensitive information. Their letter to OpenAI's board and safety committees, which Balesni shared on Thursday, asks the company not to move ahead with developments that reduce its ability to monitor model reasoning and says the firings are chilling the open culture OpenAI has prized in the past. Korbak wrote To be clear, talking to METR was my job, referring to the outside safety group that investigated July's Hugging Face incident.

  Details and sources

  Balesni wrote I never shared company IP and Wang that The reasons that we were provided for our terminations are simply not adding up. OpenAI said its internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what's outlined in the letter they published, while an internal memo said We do not terminate employees for raising concerns and that the company strongly agreed with the letter's recommendations. The Wall Street Journal reported excerpts on the evening of Oct 7; the letter was released publicly on Oct 8, the date used here. The full letter was not read; quotes are from Business Insider and Gizmodo. Not on the roster; added as a guest.

  Business Insider via AOL, Gizmodo, The News