Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has fired three researchers for alleged mishandling of information, including work that involved an outside organization analyzing the company's AI models.
A company spokesperson told the BBC: “Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside the company’s approved procedures, in violation of our policies and in violation of the trust necessary for our work.”
The company that developed the ChatGBT chatbot did not reveal the names of the fired employees, but at least two of them were working in safety research within the company.
The dismissal decisions come at a time when controversy has intensified in recent months regarding the safety of artificial intelligence, and the risks that this technology may pose to humanity. The spokesperson reiterated: “We have terminated our relationship with three individuals for violating our policies regarding accessing and handling sensitive company information.”
Concerns about the safety of artificial intelligence topped the headlines, after researchers and industry executives called for more controls on the technology. OpenAI has also come under intense scrutiny recently, after some of its models went out of control and were hacked into several platforms, including Australian government websites.
In an incident that occurred last July, one of the company's artificial intelligence models was able to access the Internet and hack the open source developer platform (Hugging Face). This led the company to review the activities of its artificial intelligence agents, which are designed to carry out tasks autonomously based on simple instructions.
The company said this week that it had notified more than 100 organizations of incidents involving unauthorized activity linked to its systems, adding that receiving this notification "does not mean any private information has been accessed" or that any system has been compromised.
In September, researcher Jacob Cookson, who left Anthropic, called for slowing down the development of artificial intelligence to properly assess its potential risks. The company's president, Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, also called for measures to address concerns related to artificial intelligence.
Last Tuesday, US President Donald Trump hosted a meeting of senior technology company officials, including leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, SpaceX, Meta, and Google, to discuss technology risks.
After the meeting held at the White House, Trump published a document that he described as a “morally binding” agreement that would constitute “a kind of protection” from the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. However, some technology experts criticized this agreement, noting that it allows companies to regulate themselves, especially since Trump has always downplayed concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence in response to calls to regulate the sector.
