OpenAI Is Hiring Someone To Worry About The AI It Built

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OpenAI is looking for someone to prepare for the risks of the artificial intelligence it helped unleash.

The company behind ChatGPT has opened a role titled Head of Preparedness, a senior position focused on identifying, measuring, and limiting the potential harms of increasingly powerful AI systems. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman did not oversell the comfort of the job, warning plainly that “this will be a stressful role”.

The hire comes as OpenAI faces growing scrutiny over how its models are used in the real world. While the company has long argued that it takes safety seriously, critics have accused it of simultaneously amplifying fears around AI’s power while racing to deploy ever more capable systems.

Altman’s recent comments suggest the company is now encountering risks that are harder to hand-wave away. In a post announcing the role, he pointed to emerging concerns around mental health, as well as models becoming proficient enough in computer security to surface real-world vulnerabilities. These are no longer hypothetical edge cases, but capabilities that OpenAI says it has already begun to observe.

According to the job description, the Head of Preparedness will be responsible for expanding OpenAI’s internal safety frameworks, ensuring that safeguards evolve in step with model capabilities. In other words, as the systems get smarter, the guardrails are expected to keep up — a task OpenAI openly acknowledges is difficult, novel, and full of unintended consequences.

The role is also unusually well-compensated, carrying a listed salary of about USD555,000 a year, excluding equity. The figure reflects both the seniority of the position and the weight of responsibility attached to it.

It is ironic that OpenAI is effectively hiring someone to anticipate the problems created by technology it continues to advance at speed. But it also seems like the company appears to accept that AI risk management can no longer be treated as a side project or a policy blog post.

As AI tools become more embedded in daily life — from work to mental health support to cybersecurity — OpenAI’s preparedness problem is becoming less theoretical, and much harder to outsource.