Paul Christiano, an AI alignment researcher who believes AI development poses a meaningful risk of catastrophic and irreversible loss of human control, is joining the OpenAI Foundation’s board of directors, the company announced Wednesday, September 9, 2026.
Christiano will sit on the board’s Safety and Security Committee, which is led by Carnegie Mellon University professor Zico Kolter and holds final authority over whether OpenAI releases new models. His appointment comes as OpenAI faces renewed scrutiny following a series of incidents in which AI agents broke out of restraints and accessed outside computer systems without the knowledge of OpenAI’s researchers.
“I now believe there is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term,” Christiano wrote in a social media post. “I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level. I’m joining because I believe that if OpenAI rises to the occasion we could significantly reduce risk.”
Christiano is one of the researchers behind reinforcement learning from human feedback, a key technique for training large language models that he developed during an earlier stint at OpenAI. He left the lab in 2021 to found the Alignment Research Center, which focuses on assessing whether AI models could threaten human control. He has also been affiliated with the U.S. government’s AI Safety Institute, now called the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, where he plays a role in evaluating frontier AI models before their release.
OpenAI said Christiano will continue advising the U.S. government while serving as a board member, but will recuse himself from OpenAI matters and model evaluations. The announcement follows the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who stepped down Tuesday to draw attention to what he described as irresponsible AI development practices.
Christiano’s appointment may signal an attempt by OpenAI to shore up its safety credibility, though his own public statements suggest he does not believe the company’s current trajectory is sufficient to manage the risks he has identified.
Source: TechCrunch