OpenAI Can't Self-Police Because It Fires the People Raising the Alarm

By Alex Turner, Amber Scorah, and Karl Koch. Op-ed written for Fortune. Giving independent evaluators “employee-like access” is “a great idea”, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on September 12th. Two weeks later, OpenAI president Greg Brockman signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence which outlined the administration’s answer to growing fears about AI: the companies would police themselves. One of the accord’s four commitments, which President Trump called “ morally binding ,” was for companies to partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator. Two days later, OpenAI fired three safety researchers , including Tomek Korbak, who had served as a point of contact for one of the independent evaluators investigating the Hugging Face incident. OpenAI promised to share information with evaluators, then reportedly fired people for sharing information with evaluators. OpenAI said that the three employees “mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures,” before doubling down on X without providing further evidence . The three dispute the claim and say that “at no point do we believe we engaged with external parties outside the mandates of our jobs.” Ja