OpenAI is hiring a brand new Head of Preparedness to attempt to predict and mitigate AI’s harms

OpenAI is on the lookout for a brand new Head of Preparedness who will help it anticipate the potential harms of its fashions and the way they are often abused, as a way to information the corporate’s security technique. It comes on the finish of a 12 months that is seen OpenAI hit with quite a few accusations about ChatGPT’s impacts on customers’ psychological well being, together with a couple of wrongful death lawsuits. In a put up on X concerning the place, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the “potential influence of fashions on psychological well being was one thing we noticed a preview of in 2025,” together with different “actual challenges” which have arisen alongside fashions’ capabilities. The Head of Preparedness “is a vital function at an vital time,” he mentioned.

Per the job listing, the Head of Preparedness (who will make $555K, plus fairness), “will lead the technical technique and execution of OpenAI’s Preparedness framework, our framework explaining OpenAI’s method to monitoring and getting ready for frontier capabilities that create new dangers of extreme hurt.” It’s, in line with Altman, “a tense job and you will bounce into the deep finish just about instantly.”

During the last couple of years, OpenAI’s safety teams have undergone a whole lot of changes. The corporate’s former Head of Preparedness, Aleksander Madry, was reassigned again in July 2024, and Altman mentioned on the time that the function could be taken over by execs Joaquin Quinonero Candela and Lilian Weng. Weng left the company a couple of months later, and in July 2025, Quinonero Candela announced his transfer away from the preparedness staff to steer recruiting at OpenAI.