SAN FRANCISCO: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Thursday (Oct 1) that it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including work that involved an external organisation that evaluates artificial intelligence models.

The San Francisco-based AI lab did not confirm their identities, but at least two of the employees worked on safety and alignment, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

"We have parted ways with three individuals," OpenAI told AFP in a statement.

"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 firings come amid a tense debate about AI safety and whether the technology presents an existential risk to humanity.

Last month, a 27-year-old researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a stark warning that the leading AI labs, including OpenAI, where he previously worked, were "gaming with our lives" by racing towards developing ever more powerful models.

The three researchers fired by OpenAI are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, according to the WSJ.

All three have regularly posted about AI safety-related issues on X in recent weeks.

"I am at OpenAI and I think AI is >10 per cent likely to kill all humans," Balesni posted on Sep 10, echoing statements made by other AI employees in recent weeks.

As speculation swirled about why employees at OpenAI and Anthropic were speaking so freely about their personal beliefs, Korbak jumped into the public discourse.

"I'm quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does. I am very happy that I'm allowed to say 'I'm quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does'," Korbak wrote on Sep 11.

"It's hard to overstate how dangerous speeding towards RSI is," Wang posted in response to Coxon's resignation, referring to recursive self-improvement, which is a technique where software is designed to continuously teach itself.

Leading US tech companies signed a voluntary pledge this week to regulate themselves on safety after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.

Trump called it a "morally binding" commitment to build adequate safeguards for fast-moving technology.

Executives from Nvidia, Google, Meta, XAI, OpenAI and Anthropic signed the agreement.