OpenAI has disbanded its Mission Alignment team, which was tasked with helping employees and the public understand the company’s mission and the impact of AI, while the group’s former head has been given a new role as “chief futurist.”
OpenAI has disbanded its Mission Alignment team, which was tasked with helping employees and the public understand the company’s mission and the impact of AI, while the group’s former head has been given a new role as “chief futurist.”
The disbanded team had supposedly been working since September 2024. According to TechCrunch, its task was to implement the company’s mission — to ensure that general AI is beneficial to all of humanity.
An OpenAI spokesperson described the team as follows: “The Mission Alignment Project was a support unit that explained our purpose and role for AI to employees and the community. This activity is now integrated into the work of the entire company.”
Josh Achiam, who previously led OpenAI’s Mission Alignment division, explained in a blog post about his new role as “Chief Futurist.” He said, “I am committed to advancing the company’s mission to make general artificial intelligence useful to humanity. To do this, I will explore how the world will be transformed by AI, general AI, and the technologies that will replace it.”
Ahiam noted that in his new position he will collaborate with Jason Pruett, a physicist at OpenAI.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the rest of the mission alignment team — a group of six or seven people — were later moved to other parts of the company. The spokesperson couldn’t say where the team members were assigned, but said they were doing similar work in their new roles. It was also unclear whether Achiam would have a new team within his role as “futurologist.”
An OpenAI spokesperson explained the team's disbandment as a normal reorganization, which is typical for a rapidly growing company.
Previously, OpenAI already had a so-called “super-alignment team,” created in 2023 to study long-term existential threats from AI, but it was disbanded in 2024.
Achiam’s personal website still lists him as the head of Mission Alignment, and it also states that he is interested in ensuring “a prosperous long-term future for humanity.” According to his LinkedIn profile, he has served as the head of Mission Alignment since September 2024.
