OpenAI fires three safety researchers over alleged information leaks

the story behind why OpenAI fired 3 of its safety researchers is getting MESSIER by the hour: > the 3 have been pushing to keep AI reasoning monitorable > OpenAI suspected them of leaking secret model architecture to a researcher working with METR > bur OpenAI itself brought in METR to investigate the Hugging Face incident > one of the 3 was ASSIGNED to work with them > searched their PERSONAL phones > found disappearing Signal messages > fired all 3 a week later > one of them now accuses OpenAI of lying to journalists > Ryan Greenblatt (the METR researcher) now says OpenAI falsely accused him of accessing secret documents and leaking them > he says OpenAI might have confused a confidential document with another one that was APPROVED for sharing

Based on this article, OpenAI has made false accusations about me. The three researchers fired from OpenAI were told I facilitated architecture leaks to The Information. This is false. A journalist from The Information did reach out to me shortly before that article came out. I did not comment at all beyond asking the journalist to make it clear that a blog post I wrote which was referenced in the article was preexisting and public. The article also mentions an internal OpenAI monitorability proposal. I have heard that this memo contained highly sensitive architecture information, and that OpenAI accused me of accessing and reading it. This accusation is also false. As reported in the article, I viewed a version of the proposal that did not have sensitive IP and was approved for sharing…

On today's @MachineGodsPod, we talked to two safety researchers who were fired by OpenAI after an investigation into their communications with outside researchers. This is going to be a thorny issue in the next few years, as AI companies bring in external monitors while also trying to clamp down on leaks. Thanks for coming on @tomekkorbak and @balesni.