one year on
Current and former employees of OpenAI and Google DeepMind publish open letter demanding whistleblower protections for AI risk reporting
The 'Right to Warn' letter, signed by over a dozen current and former employees and endorsed by Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, calls on AI companies to end non-disparagement clauses and establish anonymous risk-reporting channels.
More than a dozen current and former employees at frontier AI companies today released an open letter titled ‘A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence,’ demanding that AI companies commit to stronger whistleblower protections and end non-disparagement clauses that silence risk-related criticism.
The signatories include named individuals such as Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, and William Saunders, all formerly of OpenAI, as well as Neel Nanda of Google DeepMind, and several anonymous current and former OpenAI employees. The letter is endorsed by prominent AI researchers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Stuart Russell.
The letter argues that AI companies have ‘strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight’ and that existing whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, while many AI risks are not yet regulated. It calls for companies to allow anonymous risk reporting to boards, regulators, and independent experts, and to refrain from retaliating against employees who publicly raise concerns after internal processes fail.
The record
Endorsed the letter, urging companies to respect whistleblower rights
Endorsed the letter, emphasizing the need for oversight
Endorsed the letter, supported the call for anonymous reporting
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
Over the following year, the letter became a touchstone in AI governance debates, with several signatories testifying before Congress. OpenAI quietly removed non-disparagement clauses from its separation agreements in mid-2024 after public pressure.