"A Right to Warn about Advanced AI": current and former OpenAI and DeepMind employees demand whistleblower protections
On June 4, 2024, thirteen current and former employees of frontier AI companies (mostly OpenAI, plus Google DeepMind and Anthropic alumni), six of them anonymous, published "A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence". It was endorsed by Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Stuart Russell. The letter asks AI companies not to enforce non-disparagement agreements over risk concerns, to create anonymous reporting channels to boards, regulators and independent experts, and not to retaliate against employees who go public.
Key facts
- Published June 4, 2024 at righttowarn.ai
- Named signers include Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, William Saunders, Carroll Wainwright, Daniel Ziegler (formerly OpenAI), Ramana Kumar (formerly Google DeepMind) and Neel Nanda (Google DeepMind, formerly Anthropic); six signed anonymously
- Endorsed by Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Stuart Russell
- Four principles: no enforcement of agreements that bar risk-related criticism; verifiably anonymous reporting process; a culture of open criticism; no retaliation for going public once other processes fail
- Came weeks after the Superalignment departures and reports on OpenAI's equity-linked non-disparagement terms
What happened
Lab insiders publicly argued that, without effective government oversight, employees are among the few people able to hold AI companies accountable, and that confidentiality agreements were silencing them.
Why it matters
It set the template for employee-led collective statements at frontier labs, which culminated in the July 2026 'Pacing the Frontier' statement signed by more than 1,100 lab employees.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (important-essays backfill; primary source checked)
Related events
- Jan Leike resigns, saying OpenAI's safety culture 'has taken a backseat to shiny products'; Superalignment team dissolved ★★★★
- 'Pacing the Frontier': 1,100+ frontier-lab employees ask the US to build tools to slow AI development ★★★★
- AI Futures Project publishes "AI 2027", a month-by-month scenario of superhuman AI ★★★★
Sources (1)
id: 2024-06-04-right-to-warn-letter · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline