OpenAI announced that Paul Christiano is joining its Foundation Board as a non-voting observer, and will also serve on the Safety and Security Committee (SSC) alongside chair Zico Kolter. Christiano brings government experience from his work at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) within the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he evaluates frontier AI models for national security risks. He is also the founder of the Alignment Research Center (ARC), a nonprofit focused on aligning AI with human interests.

From 2017 to 2021, he led alignment research at OpenAI, contributing foundational work on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). In his new role, Christiano offers a technically grounded perspective on governance, emphasizing the need to prepare for catastrophic AI risks. The Foundation, a separate nonprofit, holds a significant equity stake in OpenAI Group PBC and supports initiatives in scientific discovery, civil society, and responsible AI development.