OpenAI disbanded a team designed to communicate the company’s mission to the public and its employees. At the same time, the former team leader was given a new role as the company’s “chief futurist”.
OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that team members have now been assigned to other roles. The news was reported for the first time from the Platform.
The disbanded team in question appears to have formed in September 2024. Platformer says the team was dedicated to advancing the company’s “stated mission to ensure that AI benefits all of humanity.”
An official spokesperson for OpenAI described the team as follows: “The Mission Alignment project was a support function to help employees and the public understand our mission and the impact of AI. This work continues throughout the organization.”
In a blog post Posted on Wednesday, Josh Achiam, the former head of OpenAI’s mission alignment team, explained his new role as the company’s chief futurist. “My goal is to support OpenAI’s mission – to ensure that AI 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 working with Jason Pruet, an OpenAI physicist.
An OpenAI spokesman said the rest of the mission alignment team — a group of six or seven people — had since been reassigned to different parts of the company. The spokesman could not say exactly where the team members had been posted, but said they had been involved in similar work in those roles. It was also unclear whether Achiam would have a new team as part of his “future” role.
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The spokesman attributed the team’s breakup to the kinds of routine reorganizations that occur at a fast-growing company.
OpenAI previously had what it called a “hyper-alignment group” — which it was formed in 2023 and focused on studying long-term existential threats posed by artificial intelligence — but this team disbanded in 2024.
of Ahiam personal website it still lists him as the head of mission alignment at OpenAI and describes him as interested in ensuring that “the long-term future of humanity is good.” Of LinkedIn profile shows that he had served as the head of the mission alignment since September 2024.
Correction: This story originally confused the mission alignment with another similarly named group called alignment. It has been fixed and we apologize for the error.
