Paul Christiano will also join the Foundation’s Safety and Security Committee
By Clifford Agugoesi, Editor-in-Chief
OpenAI has announced the appointment of Paul Christiano to the OpenAI Foundation Board. Mr. Christiano will be a non-voting observer on the OpenAI Group PBC Board.
Christiano will also join the Safety and Security Committee (SSC) of the Foundation Board, working alongside its chair, Zico Kolter. The SSC provides governance over safety and security practices across all of OpenAI, including OpenAI Group PBC.
Christiano brings government experience spanning two administrations through his work at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation(opens in a new window) (CAISI) within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the US Department of Commerce, where he is a Senior Tech Advisor1. During his time at CAISI and its predecessor, the US AI Safety Institute, Paul has worked on evaluating frontier AI models, including capabilities with national security implications, and on approaches to mitigating associated safety and security risks.
Christiano is also the founder of the Alignment Research Center(opens in a new window) (ARC), a nonprofit research organization focused on aligning advanced AI systems with human interests. From 2017 to 2021, Christiano led alignment research at OpenAI and contributed foundational work on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). In this new capacity, Christiano brings a distinct and technically grounded perspective to OpenAI’s governance decisions. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
“Paul has helped define the field of AI alignment through work that is rigorous and focused on the hardest questions posed by increasingly capable systems. His experience working on frontier AI safety and standards in government, together with his technical judgment, will strengthen the Board’s oversight and the Safety and Security Committee’s work as OpenAI continues to develop and deploy frontier AI,” Chair of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC Boards, Bret Taylor.
“AI capabilities have advanced very rapidly in the last year and alignment remains a difficult technical problem, making the Safety and Security Committee’s responsibility more important and more challenging than ever. I am excited to join the team to help,” commented Paul Christiano.
AI is entering a new era of capability, making it increasingly important that advances in these systems are accompanied by strong safety, security, alignment and governance. Throughout Paul’s career researching AI alignment, he brings a perspective that takes seriously the possibility that advanced AI could pose catastrophic risks and that developers must prepare before systems reach more dangerous levels of capability. He has been an independent voice on whether the industry’s safeguards are adequate. We believe the Foundation’s governance is stronger with people prepared to challenge prevailing assumptions and help strengthen the evidence, safeguards, and accountability underlying critical decisions.
Paul’s appointment builds on the governance structure established through OpenAI’s recapitalization in October 2025, including the commitments made in connection with the reviews conducted over the course of a year by the California Attorney General(opens in a new window) and Delaware Attorney General(opens in a new window). Their engagement helped strengthen the governance framework.
