OpenAI disbands mission alignment team, which focused on ‘safe’ and ‘trustworthy’ AI development

OpenAI has disbanded a team that focused on — as the company itself described — ensuring that its AI systems are “safe, trustworthy, and consistently aligned with human values.” At the same time, the team’s former leader has been given a new role as the company’s “chief futurist.”

OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that the team’s members have now been assigned to other roles. The news was first reported by Platformer.

The disbanded team in question, which appears to have been formed in September of 2024, was the startup’s internal unit dedicated to working on alignment. That’s a broad field of interest within the industry that seeks to ensure that AI acts in accordance with human interests.

“We want these systems to consistently follow human intent in complex, real-world scenarios and adversarial conditions, avoid catastrophic behavior, and remain controllable, auditable, and aligned with human values,” a post from OpenAI’s Alignment Research blog declares.

An OpenAI job posting for the Alignment team describes it as being dedicated to AI research that focuses on “developing methodologies that enable AI to robustly follow human intent across a wide range of scenarios, including those that are adversarial or high-stakes.”

In a blog post published Wednesday, Josh Achiam, the former head of OpenAI’s Alignment team, explained 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 of humanity — by studying how the world will change in response to AI, AGI, and beyond,” Achiam wrote.

Achiam noted that, in his new role, he would be collaborating with Jason Pruet, a physicist from OpenAI’s technical staff.

A spokesperson for OpenAI said the rest of the Alignment team — a group of six or seven people — had subsequently been reassigned to different parts of the company. The spokesperson couldn’t say where exactly the team members had been assigned, but said that they were engaged in similar work in those roles. It was also unclear whether Achiam would have a new team as part of his “futurist” role.

The spokesperson attributed the disbanding of the team to the kinds of routine reorganizations that occur within a fast-moving company.

OpenAI previously had what it called a “superalignment team” — which 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 head of Mission Alignment at OpenAI, and describes him as being interested in ensuring that the “long-term future of humanity is good.” His LinkedIn profile shows he had served as Head of Mission Alignment since September 2024.