OpenAI disbands mission alignment team

OpenAI has disbanded a team designed to communicate the company’s mission to the public and to its own employees. At the same time, the team’s former leader has been given a new role as the company’s ‘chief futurist’.

OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that the team members have now been assigned to other roles. The news was first reported from Platformer.

The disbanded team in question appears to have been formed in September 2024. Platformer reports that the team was committed to promoting “the company’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity.”

An official spokesperson for OpenAI described the team this way: “The Mission Alignment project was a support function to help employees and the public understand our mission and the impact of AI. That work continues throughout the organization.”

In a blog post Published 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 artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity – by studying how the world will change in response to AI, AGI and more,” Achiam wrote.

Achiam noted that in his new role he would be working with Jason Pruet, an OpenAI physicist.

An OpenAI spokesperson said the rest of the mission alignment team – a group of six or seven people – had then been reassigned to different parts of the company. The spokesperson could not say where exactly the team members were assigned, but said they were doing similar work in those roles. It was also unclear whether Achiam would have a new team as part of his ‘futuristic’ role.

The spokesperson attributed the team’s dissolution to the type of routine reorganizations that take place within a rapidly evolving company.

OpenAI previously had a so-called “superalignment team” – and that’s what it was formed in 2023 and focused on studying long-term existential threats posed by AI – but that team was dissolved in 2024.

from Ahim personal website still lists him as head of mission alignment at OpenAI, and describes him as interested in ensuring that the “long-term future of humanity is good.” Are LinkedIn profile shows he has served as head of mission alignment since September 2024.

Correction: This story originally confused Mission Alignment with another team of the same name called Alignment. It has been corrected and we apologize for the error.