Mikita Balesni is an AI safety researcher who studies language-model misalignment, evaluations and the monitoring of model reasoning. He was a founding member of Apollo Research and has worked at OpenAI. He previously was a MATS scholar working with Owain Evans and co-authored the 2024 ICLR paper The Reversal Curse.
Case
OpenAI cites information-handling violations in firing three safety researchers. Their individual accounts and joint letter dispute those reasons and warn that the dismissals could weaken outside scrutiny of AI risks.
Role at the time: Former OpenAI alignment researcher
Response to this claim
Mikita Balesni says he did not share company IP and that his outside work was coordinated with his reporting line, research leadership and the board.
“If OpenAI has specific concerns, I invite them to write to us directly. I expect they will not, because our firing was pretextual.”
The conduct under scrutiny is his dismissal. His thread rejects the rationale and criticizes the firing as pretextual.
Statement dates: October 8, 2026
Statement dates: October 8, 2026
