{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-06-04-right-to-warn-letter/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-06-04-right-to-warn-letter/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2024-06-04-right-to-warn-letter","date":"2024-06-04","date_precision":"day","short_title":"\"A Right to Warn about Advanced AI\"","deck":"Current and former OpenAI and DeepMind employees demand whistleblower protections","takeaway":"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\".","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence","url":"https://righttowarn.ai/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"righttowarn.ai"}],"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI","Google DeepMind"],"title":"\"A Right to Warn about Advanced AI\": current and former OpenAI and DeepMind employees demand whistleblower protections","summary":"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"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["open-letter","whistleblowing","governance","safety-culture"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nLab 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.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt 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.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-07-28-pacing-the-frontier-letter","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-28-pacing-the-frontier-letter/","date":"2026-07-28","date_precision":"day","short_title":"1,100+ frontier-lab employees ask the US to build tools to slow AI development","deck":null,"takeaway":"This was the first time senior staff and leaders of competing frontier labs jointly asked for a way to slow the frontier, and two labs endorsed it as companies.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":7,"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI","Anthropic","Google DeepMind","Meta"]},{"id":"2024-05-17-leike-resigns-superalignment-disbanded","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-05-17-leike-resigns-superalignment-disbanded/","date":"2024-05-17","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Jan Leike resigns, saying OpenAI's safety culture 'has taken a backseat to shiny products'","deck":"Superalignment team dissolved","takeaway":"It was the defining 'safety researchers leave a frontier lab' moment of 2024.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":6,"official":4,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI"]}],"people":[{"id":"geoffrey-hinton","name":"Geoffrey Hinton","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/geoffrey-hinton/"},{"id":"yoshua-bengio","name":"Yoshua Bengio","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/yoshua-bengio/"},{"id":"daniel-kokotajlo","name":"Daniel Kokotajlo","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/daniel-kokotajlo/"},{"id":"neel-nanda","name":"Neel Nanda","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/neel-nanda/"},{"id":"stuart-russell","name":"Stuart Russell","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/stuart-russell/"}],"posts":[],"videos":[{"id":"doac-daniel-kokotajlo-offered-2m-to-keep-quiet","title":"ChatGPT Whistleblower: They Offered Me $2m To Keep Quiet, No One Is Ready For What's Coming!","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/doac-daniel-kokotajlo-offered-2m-to-keep-quiet/"}],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created (primary source checked)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":null}