OpenAI has disbanded a team focused on ensuring its AI systems are “secure, trustworthy, and consistently consistent with human values,” according to the company’s own description. At the same time, the team’s former leader took on a new role as the company’s “Chief Futurist.”
OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that team members have now been assigned to different roles. The news was first reported through Platformer.
The dismantlement team in question, which appears to have been formed in September 2024, was a department dedicated to internal alignment of the startup. This is a broad area of interest within the industry to ensure that AI acts in accordance with human interests.
A post on the OpenAI Alignment Research blog declares, “We want these systems to consistently follow human intentions across complex real-world scenarios and adversarial conditions, avoid lethal behavior, be controllable and auditable, and be consistent with human values.”
OpenAI’s job posting for the Alignment team describes it as dedicated to AI research with a focus on “developing methodologies that enable AI to robustly follow human intent across a wide range of scenarios, including adversarial or high-risk scenarios.”
In a blog post published Wednesday, Josh Achiam, former head of OpenAI’s Alignment team, described his new role as the company’s chief futurist. “My goal is to support OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity by studying how the world will change in response to AI, AGI, and more,” Achiam wrote.
Achiam noted that in his new role, he will be collaborating with Jason Pruet, a physicist on the OpenAI technical staff.
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An OpenAI spokesperson said the remainder of the Alignment team of six to seven people has since been reassigned to other parts of the company. A spokesperson did not specify where the team members were assigned exactly, but said they performed similar tasks in their roles. It was also unclear whether Achiam would have a new team as part of his “futuristic” role.
A spokesperson believed the team had been disbanded due to the sort of routine reorganization that occurs within a fast-changing company.
OpenAI previously had a “hyperalignment team” that was formed in 2023 and focused on studying long-term existential threats posed by AI, but that team was disbanded in 2024.
Achiam’s personal website still lists him as OpenAI’s mission coordinator and describes him as interested in ensuring “the long-term future of humanity.” He has served as director of mission coordination since September 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.
