A debate is playing out on social media and inside the walls of OpenAI over why the company last week fired three members of its safety team Both the former employees and OpenAI have now issued additional statements to clarify their sides of the story.

The dispute reaches beyond one company's personnel decisions: at its core are questions about how much visibility outside researchers should have into frontier AI models, and whether employees who push for that visibility can do so without jeopardizing their jobs.

Two of the dismissed researchers—Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni—worked on OpenAI's investigation of the Hugging Face security incident previously reported by Fortune. Korbak served as the technical point of contact for METR, the third-party research firm OpenAI asked to conduct an independent audit of the incident—the kind of outside review AI labs have leaned on to substantiate safety claims about their most capable systems. 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 the time, OpenAI said the “individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.”

Former Employees Publish Letter Responding to Allegations

Since then, conversation and controversy appear to have continued within OpenAI's ranks, prompting the three former employees to co-author a four-page letter, published on Oct. 8.

The letter responds to “various versions of events circulating” among OpenAI staffers and refers to ongoing “internal and external communications” about the firing that the former employees say are making current employees “afraid to speak” up.

“Terminations such as ours, executed and communicated so abruptly, are chilling the open culture OpenAI has prized in the past,” the letter says. “It is that culture we are writing to defend.”

The letter's two biggest themes are OpenAI's ability to monitor its advanced models and its engagement with third-party safety organizations such as METR—both of which shape how much outside parties can evaluate systems they cannot otherwise observe. The former employees deny leaking concerns about the ability to monitor OpenAI's latest Astra model to The Information, which published a Sept. 1 article on the matter. They also deny any foul play in their communications with METR.

The staffers urge OpenAI to preserve the ability to closely monitor its advanced models, to adhere to its commitment to embed third-party safety auditors within the organization, and to foster an open and transparent culture.

“We are concerned that our firings may be used to justify ending OpenAI's work with METR, or otherwise providing external auditors much more limited access and scope,” the letter says.

Varying Accounts of the Reasons for the Firings, but Nothing Concrete

OpenAI has not disclosed the specific reasons for the dismissals, but told Fortune it found a pattern of misconduct by the three employees, including a number of violations that clearly breached its policies for handling information. The company did not link the firings to its communications with METR or the Hugging Face incident.

Each former employee offered a brief individual explanation this week in social media posts linking to the joint letter.

Korbak said on X that OpenAI told him verbally, not in writing, that he “was fired because of the way I communicated with METR.”

“Last week I was called into a meeting with OpenAI's head of safety and told they no longer trust me. A security guard took my badge and walked me out of the building,” Korbak said. “Talking to METR was my job.”

Wang said on X that the reason OpenAI gave her was that she accessed an unnamed executive's email. She said the company granted her that access for recruiting work, and that when she no longer needed it, she asked IT to remove it, but her request was never completed.

“We were not the first to be pushed out of OpenAI under suspicious circumstances,” Wang said. “Unless the employees take a stand now against this kind of maneuver, I am concerned we will not be the last. The message to everyone still at OpenAI is clear: Raise concerns or work closely with outside safety groups, and you could be next, without being told why.”

Balesni said on X that he and his fellow researchers “were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation.”

Does OpenAI Have an Unhealthy Safety Culture?

In response to the letter, OpenAI sent an internal memo to employees and issued a public statement on X. “Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what's outlined in the letter they published, and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment,” the company said.

A lack of clarity about what exactly the employees did, or may have shared with METR, has fueled speculation about what happened. METR did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.

“I can't really see a world where OpenAI's actions are justified here,” said Neel Nanda, a Google DeepMind employee who previously worked at Anthropic, in a post on X. “Firing people over a good faith attempt to use their best judgment in a novel and uncertain situation is a sign of a highly unhealthy culture.”

Former OpenAI safety transparency lead David Robinson also spoke out this month about the company's “broken” safety culture in an op-ed in The Atlantic, writing that the company is not being “nearly safe enough” and is relying on “trial and error.” He pointed to the Hugging Face incident as evidence, arguing that the safeguards OpenAI put in place in response still failed to prevent further rogue incidents.

OpenAI shared a portion of its internal memo to employees, sent by its research leaders, with Fortune—presumably penned by Mark Chen, chief research officer, though the company did not specify the author. The memo affirmed OpenAI's commitment to working with third-party safety assessors and said “monitorability is of the utmost importance to us.”

“I cherish our open culture of debate, especially when it comes to safety, and consider this openness critically important to making the right decisions,” the memo said. “I want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out. We have always encouraged that and always will.”

OpenAI said it remains committed to working with third-party safety assessors and is finalizing contracts that it will announce “in the coming weeks.” The scope of access those agreements give outside assessors—and how closely it matches the embedded arrangements the letter urges OpenAI to preserve—will offer the most concrete indication of how those stated commitments take shape.

This story was originally reported by Fortune.