Frontier AI Risks Lead

Details

The Intelligence and Investigations team works to identify and mitigate abuse and strategic risks in collaboration with internal and external partners. The Strategic Intelligence & Analysis team provides safety intelligence for OpenAI products by monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting real-world abuse, geopolitical risks, and strategic threats.

The role focuses on understanding potential harms and misuse of frontier AI, using strategic foresight and mixed quantitative and qualitative methodologies to detect early warning signs, analyze emerging abuse patterns, and produce actionable risk intelligence. The work informs safety mitigations, product decisions, launch readiness, and partnerships across OpenAI's platforms and business interests.

Responsibilities

• Map and prioritize emerging risks at the frontier of AI.
  • Monitor upstream and external signals and trends affecting the AI ecosystem.
  • Design and maintain harm taxonomies covering how AI harms and misuse may develop over the next 0–24 months and beyond.
  • Contribute to a frontier risk register and prioritization framework based on severity, prevalence, exposure, and trajectory.
• Detect and investigate emerging abuse patterns.
  • Develop approaches to horizon scanning, competitive benchmarking, and external narrative and risk analysis.
  • Monitor abuse trends ranging from state actor misuse to criminal activity.
  • Connect individual incidents into system-level analyses involving actors, incentives, product weaknesses, and cross-product spillover.
• Turn analysis into actionable risk intelligence.
  • Translate findings into ranked risk lists and mitigation proposals for product, safety, and policy teams.
  • Work with Global Affairs and Communications teams to share findings.
  • Track mitigation effectiveness, monitor key indicators, test assumptions, and recommend course corrections.
• Build early-warning and measurement capabilities.
  • Help define metrics and signals related to misalignment, interpretability, recursive self-improvement, societal risks, and systemic risks.
  • Work with data science and visualization colleagues on monitoring views and dashboards.
  • Develop new uses of OpenAI technologies to scale detection and transform workflows.
• Provide strategic analysis and forward-looking perspectives.
  • Produce strategic intelligence estimates with context, confidence levels, judgments, and recommendations.
  • Run scenario analyses covering how frontier AI risks may evolve over the next 6–24 months.
  • Help 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 identifying expected abuse modes.
  • Turn risk insights into guidance for product, marketing, partnerships, communications, and external partner teams.
  • Develop reusable frameworks, playbooks, FAQs, and briefing materials.

Requirements

• Typically 5+ years of experience in AI research, trust and safety, integrity, security, policy analysis, or intelligence work focused on frontier AI risks.
• Experience analyzing emerging technologies and online harms, including harassment, coordinated abuse, scams, influence operations, and brand safety issues.
• Ability to convert all-source analysis into concrete, 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 and trends developed with data science teams.
• Strong adversarial and product intuition, including the ability to anticipate misuse of AI tools and evaluate how product mechanics, incentives, and UX decisions influence risk.
• Experience designing and using risk frameworks and taxonomies, such as harm classification schemes, severity and likelihood matrices, and prioritization models.
• Understanding of foresight methodologies, including horizon scanning, scenario planning, tabletop exercises, and simulations.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with product, engineering, data science, operations, legal, and policy teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience producing concise, executive-ready briefs and explaining complex issues clearly.
• Comfort working in fast-changing and ambiguous environments by identifying weak signals, forming hypotheses, testing them, and adapting as the threat landscape evolves.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Health Savings Accounts, flexible spending accounts, commuter benefits, and a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, caregiver, sick, and safe leave.
• Paid time off and company holidays.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer. Background checks are administered in accordance with applicable law, and reasonable accommodations are available to applicants with disabilities.