Right to Warn

In June 2024, former OpenAI employees including Daniel Kokotajlo, William Saunders, and several anonymous colleagues published an open letter calling for a 'right to warn' about advanced AI. They argued that AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, that existing whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity while AI risks are mostly not yet regulated, and that non-disparagement agreements and equity-based retaliation mechanisms actively suppress the flow of safety-relevant information from inside the companies to the public. Lawrence Lessig agreed to represent the signatories pro bono. His argument: 'Employees are an important line of safety defense, and if they can't speak freely without retribution, that channel's going to be shut down.' The proposed right to warn is a legal intervention designed to support a professional norm — a concrete example of the multi-modal governance Lessig's framework prescribes.