Controversy swirls over ‘abrupt’ firing of OpenAI safety team members involved in the Hugging Face hack investigation
Source: Fortune ·
Three former employees publish a letter in response to allegations about their firings, to which OpenAI responds with an internal memo and public-facing statement.
From the source
A debate is playing out on social media, and inside the walls of OpenAI, about why the company fired three individuals last week on its safety team. Now, the former employees, as well as OpenAI, have issued additional statements to clarify their sides of the story. Two of the fired researchers—Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni—worked on OpenAI’s investigation of the Hugging Face incident. Korbak was the technical point of contact for METR, the third-party research firm that OpenAI asked to conduct an independent audit of the incident. The third dismissed employee, Jasmine Wang, was a program manager on OpenAI’s safety team. The Wall Street Journal first reported the dismissals on Oct. 1. At that time, OpenAI said the “individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.” Fired employees publish a letter responding to the allegations Since then, there appears to have been continued…