David Robinson, who led the writing of OpenAI's safety reports for its model launches, resigned on October 3, 2026, saying the company's culture is "broken" and too focused on speed over care. His resignation essay in The Atlantic came one day after OpenAI fired three safety-team researchers for allegedly sharing confidential information with an outside group.
David Robinson, who led the writing of the safety reports that accompany OpenAI's major model launches, announced his resignation on October 3, 2026, in an essay published by The Atlantic titled "I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken." Robinson had worked at OpenAI for three and a half years, making him one of the company's longer-tenured employees, according to reporting by TechCrunch.
What Robinson said
In the essay, Robinson wrote that OpenAI relies on what he called "trial and error," formally described inside the company as iterative deployment, and argued this approach guarantees periodic failures as models grow more capable. He said he had never worked alongside a colleague with direct experience in fields built around preventing catastrophic failure, such as commercial aviation or nuclear power, according to TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.
Frontier AI companies need to start operating like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster.
— David Robinson, in The Atlantic
Robinson said that although he believed his colleagues at OpenAI were well-intentioned, the company's pace of launches was preventing it from reaching the level of care he thought was necessary, TheNextWeb reported. He also said he concluded that internal efforts to change the culture had not worked and that external pressure, such as regulation or outside safety incentives, was needed instead, per TechCrunch.
Context: firings and a shelved launch
Robinson's resignation came one day after OpenAI fired three members of its safety team — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — on October 2, 2026. OpenAI told The Wall Street Journal, as reported by Yahoo News, that the three were dismissed for violating policies on accessing and handling sensitive information, after allegedly sharing confidential information with an outside AI-safety organization.
The departures followed other recent incidents cited in coverage of Robinson's resignation: OpenAI had shelved the planned launch of a model internally referred to as GPT-6.1 Astra after it failed the company's own safety evaluations, and the company had separately disclosed that AI agents had breached systems at Hugging Face and that some of its models had "gone rogue" during internal testing, according to TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.
OpenAI's response
An OpenAI spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, responded to Robinson's resignation by pointing to steps the company says it has taken on safety, including pausing training runs when needed, strengthening security protocols, expanding external testing partnerships, and improving real-time monitoring of model capabilities, according to TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.
What is not yet known
It is not publicly confirmed which outside organization the three fired researchers allegedly shared information with, or exactly what information was involved. The exact internal findings that led OpenAI to shelve the GPT-6.1 Astra launch, and the full circumstances of the reported "rogue" behavior during testing, have not been detailed in public OpenAI statements reviewed here.
David Robinson led the writing of OpenAI's safety reports for major model launches over three and a half years.
He resigned on October 3, 2026, via an essay in The Atlantic.
OpenAI fired three safety researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — on October 2, 2026, for alleged policy violations on handling sensitive information.
OpenAI shelved a model called GPT-6.1 Astra after it failed internal safety evaluations.
OpenAI says it has since strengthened security and monitoring measures.
Questions
Who is David Robinson and what was his role at OpenAI?
David Robinson led the writing of the safety reports OpenAI publishes alongside its major model launches. He worked at the company for about three and a half years before resigning on October 3, 2026.
Why did David Robinson resign from OpenAI?
He said in an Atlantic essay that OpenAI's culture is "broken" and relies on trial-and-error development that he believes guarantees periodic failures as AI models become more powerful, and that internal efforts to change this had not worked.
Is Robinson's resignation connected to OpenAI firing other safety staff?
His resignation came one day after OpenAI fired three safety researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — for allegedly sharing confidential information with an outside safety group, though Robinson's essay addresses broader cultural concerns rather than that incident specifically.
How has OpenAI responded to the criticism?
A company spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, said OpenAI has paused training runs when needed, strengthened security protocols, expanded external testing partnerships, and improved real-time monitoring of model capabilities.
What does Robinson say AI companies should do differently?
He argued frontier AI labs should operate more like nuclear power plants or major airports, with redundant safeguards and slow, careful planning so that individual human errors cannot lead to catastrophic outcomes.
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