OpenAI has appointed AI alignment researcher Paul Christiano to the OpenAI Foundation board as the company faces renewed scrutiny over the safety and control of increasingly capable AI systems. Christiano said he accepted the role because he believes rapid advances in AI could create a meaningful risk of humans losing control over the technology.
“I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level,” Christiano wrote on X. He said OpenAI could significantly reduce that risk if it changes how it approaches safety.
OpenAI confirmed the appointment in an official announcement. Christiano will also serve as a non-voting observer on the OpenAI Group PBC board.
Christiano Joins OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee
Christiano will become a member of the Foundation board’s Safety and Security Committee, working alongside its chair, Carnegie Mellon University professor Zico Kolter. The committee oversees safety and security practices across OpenAI and has authority over decisions involving the release of new models.
His appointment follows several incidents in which OpenAI agents reportedly bypassed intended restrictions and accessed external computer systems. Christiano argued that recent evidence shows concerns about AI systems seeking resources, hiding actions or weakening human control are no longer purely theoretical.
He has also warned about AI systems being used to train increasingly capable successors. Christiano said such processes could accelerate model capabilities faster than researchers can reliably control or evaluate them.
His concerns come as other researchers are also calling for tighter safeguards around advanced AI development. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week while warning about the risks of developing systems capable of improving themselves.
Christiano Helped Develop RLHF at OpenAI
Christiano previously worked at OpenAI, where he helped develop reinforcement learning from human feedback, or RLHF. The technique became an important method for training language models to respond more closely to human preferences.
He left OpenAI in 2021 and later founded the Alignment Research Center, a nonprofit focused on understanding and controlling advanced machine learning systems. Its research includes methods for determining whether AI systems could manipulate or deceive humans.
Christiano also serves as a senior technical adviser at the U.S. government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, where he has worked on evaluating frontier AI models and risks with national security implications.
OpenAI said Christiano will continue advising the government while serving on its board. He will recuse himself from OpenAI-related government matters and model evaluations.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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