In a significant move highlighting its focus on frontier artificial intelligence safety, OpenAI has announced it is hiring for a senior executive position titled 'Head of Preparedness'. The role, described by CEO Sam Altman as both "critical" and "stressful," is aimed at steering the company's strategy for managing the risks associated with its most powerful AI models.
A Critical Role for a Critical Time
The new Head of Preparedness will lead OpenAI's Safety Systems team, a unit established earlier in 2024. Initially, this team was overseen directly by CEO Sam Altman alongside board members Adam D'Angelo and Nicole Seligman. According to the official job listing, the core mandate of this team is to ensure that OpenAI's most advanced and capable AI models can be developed and deployed responsibly.
The listing elaborates that the candidate will "lead a small, high-impact team to drive core Preparedness research" while collaborating across the organization to implement a comprehensive safety framework. OpenAI states it has already "invested deeply in Preparedness across multiple generations of frontier models," developing evaluations, threat models, and mitigation strategies. The new head's task will be to expand and guide this program to ensure safety standards keep pace with rapidly evolving AI capabilities.
Sam Altman's Stark Warning
CEO Sam Altman personally shared the job posting on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), offering a candid and urgent perspective on the position's demands. "This will be a stressful job and you'll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately," Altman wrote, underscoring the high-pressure nature of the work.
He framed the role as essential for helping the world navigate the dual-use nature of powerful AI. Altman specifically pointed to enabling cybersecurity defenders with cutting-edge tools while preventing malicious actors from using the same technology for harm. He extended this concern to the realm of biological capabilities and the long-term challenge of ensuring the safety of AI systems that possess the ability to self-improve.
The Expanding Frontier of AI Risks
In his detailed post, Altman provided context for why this role is so vital at this moment. He noted that AI models are improving at a remarkable speed, offering great benefits but also beginning to present "some real challenges." He referenced a preview of AI's potential impact on mental health observed in 2025 and highlighted that models are now becoming proficient enough at computer security to start discovering critical vulnerabilities.
"We are just now seeing models get so good at computer security they are beginning to find critical vulnerabilities," Altman stated, emphasizing the tangible and immediate risks. The job, therefore, involves moving beyond basic capability measurement to developing a nuanced understanding of how these capabilities could be misused and devising ways to limit downsides both within OpenAI's products and in the wider world.
Altman acknowledged the difficulty of the task, noting there is little precedent and many ideas that seem sound can have unforeseen edge cases. The Head of Preparedness will be at the forefront of tackling these unprecedented safety and ethical questions as AI continues its rapid advancement.
