Read OpenAI’s Alignment team is being disbanded, signaling a change in company’s approach to creating safe and trustworthy AISince September 2024, with the drive and leadership of new team captain Joshua Achiam, this has changed. The department went through an overall restructuring and its members were given new roles throughout the ACE organization. As for Achiam himself, he has moved on to a new role as OpenAI’s Chief Futurist.
This reorganization comes on the heels of an earlier OpenAI effort — the 2023 formation of a “superalignment team.” Yet, this group too was threatened with dissolution in 2024, capturing recent history of rapid turnover in OpenAI’s shift toward AI alignment. OpenAI’s spokesperson confirmed that the remainder of the Alignment crew has been reallocated. They provided no details on whether Achiam will head up a new team under his futurist role.
At Achiam’s new role, he’ll be working closely with Jason Pruet, a physicist and member of OpenAI’s technical staff. Together, they’ll look at how AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI) will affect future societal changes. Achiam is deeply committed to OpenAI’s mission. In his detailed, thoughtful blog post, he’s right in focusing on the need to understand how the world will change in parallel with the development of AI technologies.
“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.” – Joshua Achiam
Achiam’s personal website, as of this writing, still describes him as OpenAI’s head of Mission Alignment. According to his LinkedIn resume, he has been Head of Mission Alignment since September 2024. This gap points to the still-transitory nature of his recent move to head the organization and the still-in-process nature of internal changes at the organization.
OpenAI has consistently emphasized the need for AI systems that are “safe, trustworthy, and consistently aligned with human values.” Their Alignment Research blog further states their goal of ensuring that AI systems can “consistently follow human intent in complex, real-world scenarios and adversarial conditions,” while avoiding catastrophic outcomes.
As OpenAI shifts towards a broader view of AI development, it remains to be seen what directions Achiam’s new role will take and how it will impact the organization’s future endeavors. The recent developments underscore the dynamic landscape of AI research and the importance of aligning technological advancements with ethical considerations.
