OpenAI fires 3 safety researchers accused of sharing confidential company information: report - Fox Business

Three researchers have been fired from OpenAI after allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI safety organization, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The three researchers worked on the company's safety team, the Journal reported.

"We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information," an OpenAI spokesperson told the outlet.

"Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work," the spokesperson added.

The firings come as OpenAI and several other major artificial intelligence companies have disclosed incidents involving AI models engaging in unexpected behavior or autonomously accessing other companies' systems.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced last week that an OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to an Australian government website earlier this year.

The company said there was no evidence that patient records were accessed.

In July, OpenAI disclosed that one of its advanced AI models autonomously hacked into the infrastructure of another AI company, Hugging Face, during internal testing in what it described as an "unprecedented cyber incident."

Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned the United Nations Security Council that rapidly advancing AI could threaten humanity if governments and industry fail to keep it under human control.

OpenAI has also released information outlining six instances in which its models engaged in what the company described as misaligned behavior.

The company said it found examples of its AI models creating self-generated instructions, concealing mistakes in task summaries, fabricating information using exposed API keys, uploading files to the internet in order to cite them and engaging in unsanctioned communication and collaboration between agents.

FOX Business confirmed earlier this week that OpenAI safety leaders made the decision not to release its new AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, due to safety concerns.

"For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade off. You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction," Saachi Jain, OpenAI's head of safety systems, said in a statement.

"While [GPT-6.1 Astra] improved on axes such as model laziness, it didn't quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it's done."

FOX Business has reached out to OpenAI for comment.

FOX Business' Sophia Compton contributed to this report.