AI Emerging Risks Analyst

Details

About the Team

The Intelligence and Investigations team seeks to rapidly identify and mitigate abuse and strategic risks to ensure a safe online ecosystem in close collaboration with internal and external partners. The Strategic Intelligence & Analysis (SIA) team provides safety intelligence for OpenAI’s products by monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting real-world abuse, geopolitical risks, and strategic threats to inform safety mitigations, product decisions, and partnerships.

About the role

We are looking for an AI Emerging Risks Analyst to help understand potential harms and misuse of AI in a time of rapid, sustained change. You will provide strategic-level perspectives on evolving risk areas, produce actionable risk taxonomies relevant to OpenAI’s platforms and business interests, and use mixed quantitative and qualitative methodologies to spot early warning signs, pull threads on concerning behavior, and turn weak signals into prioritized risk calls. The role focuses on upstream ecosystem scanning, competitive benchmarking, external narrative and risk sense-making, and informing cross-functional partners in protection and safety to guide mitigations.

Responsibilities

• Map and prioritize emerging risks

  • Build and continuously refine a picture of emerging signals and trends through upstream and external scanning.
  • Design and maintain harm taxonomies that provide foresight about how AI harms and misuse may manifest over the next 0–24 months and beyond.
  • Contribute to a risk register and prioritization framework that surfaces top issues by severity, prevalence, exposure, and trajectory.

• Detect and deep dive into emerging abuse patterns

  • Create approaches to horizon scanning, competitive benchmarking, and external narrative/risk sense-making.
  • Stay current on abuse trends ranging from state actor misuse to criminal activity, drawing from internal and cross-functional partners.
  • Connect individual incidents into system-level stories about actors, incentives, product design weaknesses, and cross-product spillover.

• Turn analysis into actionable risk intelligence

  • Translate findings into clear, ranked risk lists and concrete mitigation proposals for product, safety, and policy teams.
  • Work with Global Affairs and Communications to share findings in ways that reinforce OpenAI’s role in the online safety ecosystem.
  • Track whether mitigation work is landing: follow key indicators, pressure-test assumptions, and push for course corrections when necessary.

• Build early warning and measurement capabilities

  • Help define core metrics and signals that indicate whether AI environments are safe (e.g., harm prevalence, severity distributions, escalation rates, brand safety issues).
  • Work with data science and visualization colleagues to shape monitoring views and dashboards that highlight leading indicators and unusual changes.
  • Pioneer new uses of OpenAI technologies to scale detection and transform workflows.

• Provide strategic analysis and future-looking perspectives

  • Produce concise strategic intelligence estimates with confidence levels based on observed data.
  • Run scenario analyses exploring how AI harms might evolve over the next 6–24 months.
  • Design and run tabletop exercises for internal and partner audiences.
  • Benchmark OpenAI’s risk profile and mitigations against external incidents and other platforms.

• Shape safety readiness for new products

  • Contribute to product readiness and launch reviews by outlining expected abuse modes.
  • Turn risk insights into practical guidance for internal teams and, where appropriate, external partners.
  • Develop reusable frameworks, playbooks, FAQs, and briefing materials to help the organization understand and respond to AI risks.

Requirements

• Significant experience (typically 5+ years) in trust and safety, integrity, security, policy analysis, or intelligence work focused on emerging risks and translated into actionable intelligence.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze complex online harms (e.g., harassment, coordinated abuse, scams, influence operations, brand safety) and convert all-source analysis into prioritized recommendations.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort working with qualitative and quantitative inputs, including casework, incident reports, OSINT, product context, policy frameworks, and basic metrics in partnership with data science (harm prevalence, severity profiles, exposure, escalation rates).
• Strong adversarial and product intuition; able to foresee how actors might adapt AI tools for misuse and evaluate how product mechanics, incentives, and UX influence risk.
• Experience designing and using risk frameworks and taxonomies (harm classification schemes, severity/likelihood matrices, prioritization models).
• Understanding and application of foresight methodologies including horizon scanning, scenario planning, tabletop exercises, or simulations.
• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with product, engineering, data science, operations, legal, and policy teams and to follow through on mitigation work.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including producing concise, executive-ready briefs and explaining sensitive, complex issues clearly.
• Comfort operating in fast-changing, ambiguous environments: identify weak signals, form hypotheses, test them quickly, and adjust as the product and threat landscape evolves.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The company emphasizes safety and diverse perspectives and is an equal opportunity employer. Background checks will be administered in accordance with applicable law for U.S.-based candidates.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary range: $178.2K–$320K (offers equity; total compensation includes equity and potential performance-related bonuses).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental leave and paid medical and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees; 13+ paid company holidays and coordinated office closures.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits (charitable donation matching, wellness stipends) as applicable.