Twenty House Democrats press OpenAI over fired safety researchers

Twenty House Democrats have asked OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman to promise not to fire OpenAI whistleblowers who share safety information. They also want OpenAI to keep its pause on its most capable models until independent oversight is in place. Representative Greg Casar of Texas led the letter, dated 29 October. It asks OpenAI to answer 11 sets of questions by 13 November. The letter names the researchers as Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni and Jasmine Wang. OpenAI reportedly fired them after it checked their personal phones. It found disappearing messages turned on in their Signal chats with Ryan Greenblatt, then a researcher at Redwood Research. TNW covered the firings last week.