OpenAI said Friday it is standing by the dismissal of Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni after an internal investigation found a “significant breach of trust.”
The company said the three violated clear policies on handling sensitive information and insisted the firings were not retaliation for raising AI safety concerns, though it gave no further details.
The statement directly answered an open letter the researchers published Thursday, in which they said they were fired for speaking up and had acted within OpenAI’s mission and past norms.
The dispute lands amid broader unrest inside AI labs over frontier-system safety, following high-profile security breaches this year and growing calls from staff to slow development and strengthen safeguards.