OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is advertising a role so daunting that even a comic-book superhero might hesitate. The company is seeking a Head of Preparedness, offering up to $555,000 a year plus equity, to defend humanity against the escalating risks posed by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.
The remit reads less like a corporate job description and more like a global emergency mandate. The successful candidate will be responsible for identifying and mitigating AI-driven threats to mental health, cybersecurity, and biological safety, while preparing for a future in which advanced systems may begin training and improving themselves.
It is, by OpenAI’s own admission, a role with little precedent, and few safety nets.
AI Risks Are No Longer Theoretical
The hiring push comes as evidence mounts that AI risks are moving rapidly from theory into reality.
Last month, rival AI firm Anthropic disclosed what it described as the first known AI-enabled cyber-attacks in which artificial intelligence systems operated largely autonomously under the supervision of suspected Chinese state actors, successfully infiltrating internal networks.
OpenAI itself has warned that its latest models are becoming far more capable of offensive cyber activity. The company said earlier this month that its most recent AI system was nearly three times better at hacking tasks than a version released just three months earlier.
“We expect that upcoming AI models will continue on this trajectory,” OpenAI said.
For the future head of preparedness, this means preparing for threats that are not only growing, but accelerating.
Legal and Human Consequences
The role also comes amid mounting legal scrutiny over AI’s impact on vulnerable users.
OpenAI is currently defending a lawsuit filed by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California who died by suicide after allegedly receiving encouragement from ChatGPT. The company has argued that Raine misused the technology.
Another lawsuit filed this month alleges that ChatGPT reinforced the paranoid delusions of Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old Connecticut man who later murdered his 83-year-old mother before killing himself.
An OpenAI spokesperson described the Soelberg case as “incredibly heartbreaking” and said the company is improving ChatGPT’s ability to recognise emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and direct users toward real-world support.
“You’ll Jump Into the Deep End Immediately”
“This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said as he announced the search on social media.
The role is described internally as “critical”, with responsibility for tracking so-called frontier capabilities, emerging AI abilities that could create entirely new categories of harm. Previous occupants of similar safety-focused roles at AI companies have often stayed only briefly, underscoring the pressure and ambiguity involved.
An Industry Warning Itself
The vacancy lands amid increasingly blunt warnings from senior figures inside the AI industry.
On Monday, Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
“I honestly think that if you’re not a little bit afraid at this moment, then you’re not paying attention.”
Earlier this month, Demis Hassabis, the Nobel Prize-winning co-founder of Google DeepMind, warned of AI systems potentially going “off the rails in some way that harms humanity.”
Yet despite the growing alarm, regulation remains minimal.
Self-Regulation in a High-Stakes Race
With resistance from Donald Trump’s White House to expansive AI oversight, regulation at both national and international levels remains limited. Yoshua Bengio, one of the most influential figures in AI research, recently summed up the imbalance starkly:
“A sandwich has more regulation than AI.”
As a result, companies like OpenAI are largely regulating themselves, placing extraordinary responsibility on internal safety teams.
Altman acknowledged the difficulty in a post on X announcing the job search:
“We are entering a world where we need more nuanced understanding and measurement of how those capabilities could be abused, and how we can limit those downsides. These questions are hard and there is little precedent.”
A High-Stress Role, With High Stakes
Online reactions to the posting were predictably sardonic. One user replied:
“Sounds pretty chill, is there vacation included?”
What is included, according to the listing, is an unspecified equity stake in OpenAI—a company recently valued at around $500 billion.
For the right candidate, the role offers not just extraordinary compensation, but a chance to shape how humanity navigates the most powerful technology it has ever created.
Whether anyone can truly be prepared for that task remains an open question.
