Three OpenAI safety researchers who lost their jobs last week have published an open letter accusing the company of prioritizing profit over safety.

The researchers—Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni—were dismissed by OpenAI, which says they shared confidential material outside the company. The three maintain they were simply carrying out their jobs.

What happened and when

The terminations occurred on or around October 1, 2026. OpenAI cited violations of company policies governing sensitive information.

An internal investigation reportedly concluded that the trio had passed confidential materials to an outside AI safety organization. The researchers rejected that characterization, arguing that their conduct fell within their professional responsibilities.

That defense carries some weight given Korbak's former role. He previously served as OpenAI's liaison to METR and Redwood Research, two external safety groups. When part of the job involves engaging with outside safety researchers, the line between "collaboration" and "leak" can blur quickly.

On October 8, the three sent a letter to OpenAI's board and its safety committees. It has since been published on Balesni's personal website.

The letter's central warning concerns "chain of thought" monitoring. Advanced AI models can produce a trail of intermediate reasoning before arriving at an output, and safety researchers watch that trail for signs that a model is doing something it should not. The letter highlights the potential risks should that monitoring capability be lost.

The researchers also pointed to broad uncertainty across the industry about how to safely build and deploy models that operate beyond human oversight. Their proposed fix was twofold: industry-wide collaboration on model monitoring, and the introduction of independent safety auditors.

OpenAI's response

OpenAI has drawn a firm line between the letter and the firings. The company said the terminations were not connected to the researchers' safety advocacy. It went further, stating that it agrees with the letter's recommendations. In OpenAI's view, the dismissals were necessary because of breaches of trust.

A pattern of safety exits

The firings did not happen in a vacuum. Just days earlier, David Robinson resigned from his post as OpenAI's safety transparency lead. Robinson had been critical of the company's internal culture, raising concerns about how OpenAI balances rapid technical progress against adequate safety measures.

There is also history here. In 2024, OpenAI fired researchers over similar violations, amid ongoing safety concerns. The company has additionally faced public criticism of its safety practices, including recent security incidents.

What this means

For the wider AI industry, the letter's substance matters more than the personnel drama. Chain of thought monitoring is one of the few windows researchers currently have into how advanced models reach their conclusions, and the call for shared monitoring standards suggests the authors see the issue as a collective problem that no single company can solve alone.

There is a structural tension worth watching as well. Labs want outside validation of their safety work, which requires sharing information. They also want to protect proprietary research, which requires keeping it close. The firing of a former liaison to external safety groups for allegedly sharing material externally sits right on that fault line.

The next signals to watch are fairly concrete: whether OpenAI announces any formal arrangement with independent auditors; whether other labs respond publicly to the letter's call for joint work on model monitoring; and whether more safety staff follow Robinson and the three researchers out the door.