Three OpenAI safety researchers fired last week—Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni—have denied misconduct allegations and warned that their dismissal creates a chilling effect on internal safety discussions and collaboration with external experts. They claim the firing represents a cultural shift away from OpenAI's historical encouragement of open debate and safety concerns. OpenAI maintains the terminations were based on policy violations unrelated to raising safety concerns.