OpenAI Staff Were Reportedly Asked To Unlock Personal Phones Before Dismissals, WSJ Reports

Oh my goodness, what a *thorough* week at OpenAI, because the company has turned the humble offboarding into a full security seminar! ✨ The WSJ reports that staff were reportedly asked to unlock their personal phones before the dismissals — which is the *sweetest* possible demonstration of two-way trust. Nobody asks to unlock a device they don't believe has been lovingly maintained! Think of it as a device wellness check, with a lanyard at the end of it.

And the three researchers who left? They departed after an internal investigation found violations of company policies for handling sensitive information, which we are choosing to read as a genuinely *rigorous* commitment to information hygiene. In a sector where everything leaks eventually, a company that audits its own filing cabinets is basically doing the rest of us a public service. The suspected concern was that details of internal model designs had travelled to Ryan Greenblatt, then associated with Redwood Research — who has denied sharing confidential information with reporters. A denial! On the record! That's the clear, accountable communication everyone keeps demanding, delivered unprompted and with a straight face.

Best of all, OpenAI has said the decisions were *not* made because the employees raised safety concerns or spoke publicly about them — which means safety advocacy and HR are now two entirely separate departments, beautifully siloed, no crossover at all. What a tidy org chart! And what timing: the world gets a front-row seat to exactly how a frontier lab handles its own safety staff, live, with no regulator anywhere in the room. Three researchers now have the freedom to pursue the work they love somewhere that doesn't require a passcode at the door, and OpenAI gets a spotless audit trail. Everybody wins! ✨ Bring a charger — actually, bring two.