OpenAI employees warned about operational security lapses for years, sources say

A man described as Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national employed as an OpenAI engineer, looks behind a TV where a recording device had been placed at a conference room in OpenAI offices, in a still image from surveillance video included in a charging document after U.S. federal agents arrested and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording device, in San Francisco on Oct. 5. | U.S. Department of Justice / via REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO - When OpenAI disclosed in October that it found a recording device planted in an executive conference room, a number of former employees had the same reaction -- they were not surprised. Even before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, some company staffers raised concerns internally about its security practices, according to five people familiar with the matter. Employees shared their concerns with top OpenAI leaders and the board of directors, the people said, adding that some staffers came away from those interactions concluding that management was more focused on keeping pace with competitors like Google and Anthropic than on security. These workers argued that OpenAI's controls were so lax that outsiders, including foreign governments, could obtain sensitive information about the artificial intelligence lab's technology with relative ease, the people said. For example, anybody at OpenAI who could access its code could see the technical details underlying many company projects.