Program Officer, AI Model Safety

OpenAI Foundation • San Francisco, CA

18h

About The Position

OpenAI Foundation is hiring a founding grantmaker for its AI Model Safety program, part of the AI Resilience team. The program aims to make AI systems safer by default through independent testing and evaluations, stronger industry standards, and foundational research to prevent safety issues or detect and address them early. Its work includes understanding and improving model behavior through testing, red-teaming, interpretability, alignment, and control research.

This is an early, zero-to-one role with significant independence. The Program Officer will lead grantmaking from opportunity sourcing and investigation through recommendations and delivery of resources to grantees. The role also involves proactively identifying and developing priority projects and organizations, finding founders, and helping new initiatives scale. The officer will develop program strategy with the AI Resilience team and work closely with the AI Resources team to help safety grantees access and productively use AI resources. The position reports to Lennart Heim, Director of AI Resources. Mid-career and senior candidates are welcome.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of experience in AI safety, ideally including hands-on research in model safety or evaluations; relevant experience may come from research, a safety or evaluations team, grantmaking, or helping start an organization.
• Deep, current fluency in AI model safety, including evaluations, red-teaming, auditing, interpretability, control, and alignment research.
• Close familiarity with frontier AI capabilities and risks, with independent judgment about the most important risks and the roles different parts of the ecosystem should play.
• Independent views on the direction of AI capabilities, the risks they may bring, and the safety work that will be needed.
• Ability to own ambitious, loosely scoped projects, identify and persuade the right people to start new work, and support their success.
• Strong prioritization skills, including evaluating opportunities by impact, tractability, and neglectedness and acting on those priorities.
• Ability to write and communicate compelling, transparent documents that explain reasoning and appropriately highlight risks, uncertainties, and downsides.
• Strong mission alignment and enthusiasm for helping ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.

Nice To Haves

• Grantmaking, venture capital, or philanthropic experience, especially experience seeding organizations or sub-fields.
• A research track record in evaluations, interpretability, control, or adjacent technical safety areas.
• Existing relationships across safety organizations, AI safety institutes, and AI company safety teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead grantmaking across independent testing and evaluations, industry standards, foundational safety research, AI control, and other emerging areas, from sourcing and investigation through delivery of resources to grantees.
• Conduct grant investigations and make grant recommendations to the board.
• Identify important projects and organizations that need to exist; scope priority projects, find or develop founders, and build new initiatives, including seeding them when needed.
• Coordinate with the AI Resources team to route AI resources to safety grantees and help them use those resources productively.
• Develop program strategy with the team lead, including determining funding priorities, tracking ecosystem activity, and identifying gaps.
• Build and maintain relationships with independent safety organizations, AI safety institutes, academic groups, philanthropic and venture capital funders, and AI companies’ safety teams.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed