“Sam Altman, our former boss, has repeatedly called for AI regulation,” they write in a letter that was shared with Politico and which urges California Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the bill. “Now, when actual regulation is on the table, he opposes it.” The two add that, “With appropriate regulation, we hope OpenAI may yet live up to its mission statement of building AGI safely.”

Responding to the former employees, an OpenAI spokesperson said the startup, “strongly disagrees with the mischaracterization of our position on SB 1047,” in a statement to TechCrunch. The spokesperson pointed to AI bills in Congress OpenAI has endorsed, noting that “frontier AI safety regulations should be implemented at the federal level because of their implications for national security and competitiveness.”