Technology & Science
OpenAI Posts $555k ‘Head of Preparedness’ Vacancy After Safety Leadership Gap
On 29 Dec 2025 OpenAI publicly advertised a new Head of Preparedness role—vacant since mid-2024—offering a $555,000 salary plus equity to rebuild its AI-risk safety arm, a move CEO Sam Altman flagged as immediately high-pressure.
Focusing Facts
- Job listing went live 29 Dec 2025 with stated base salary of $555,000 and equity, per OpenAI careers page.
- The position has been unfilled since July 2024, when former head Aleksander Madry shifted to an AI-reasoning post.
- OpenAI is simultaneously fighting at least two U.S. wrongful-death lawsuits (filed 2025) that allege ChatGPT interactions contributed to suicides and a murder–suicide.
Context
Tech companies rarely elevate risk oversight to C-suite parity; the last comparable scramble was the 1947–1950 creation of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after physicists raised existential alarms about uncontrolled fission research. OpenAI’s rush echoes that moment: breakthrough capability raced ahead of governance, then bureaucracy was hastily erected around the threat. The job ad signals a structural trend—AI labs shifting from abstract principles to operational safety pipelines as models cross into cyber, bio, and mental-health domains once reserved for states. If these pipelines mature, future AI could resemble civil aviation (zero-fatality aspiration achieved over 50 years); if not, we may replay the early 1990s internet security chaos, scaled to cognition. Either way, the hire matters less for the individual than for the precedent: in 2125 historians may mark 2025 as the year commercial AI firms began institutionalising self-constraint—or admitted they could not police themselves, inviting external regulators to step in.
Perspectives
Tech industry trade outlets
e.g., Tech Times, CIOL — Hiring a Head of Preparedness shows OpenAI is proactively building rigorous safety infrastructure as AI enters a new era of real-world risk. Coverage leans on OpenAI’s own framing, largely trusting the company’s statements and downplaying lawsuits or internal safety resignations, reflecting an industry-friendly angle that prizes innovation momentum.
Left-leaning mainstream media
e.g., The Guardian, Yahoo! Finance — The vacancy underscores alarming gaps in oversight, with experts fearing advanced AI could harm humanity while firms like OpenAI largely regulate themselves. Stories stress worst-case scenarios and dramatic language ("impossible job," AI may "turn on us") to press for stricter external regulation, amplifying fear more than technical nuance.
Business/financial outlets spotlighting compensation
e.g., Gulf News, Entrepreneur, Economic Times — The $555,000 salary and equity package signal how valuable and high-stakes AI-risk leadership roles have become inside profit-driven tech firms. By foregrounding the eye-catching pay and career upside, these pieces risk trivializing deeper ethical concerns and cater to reader interest in lucrative jobs rather than systemic safety debates.