Sam Altman creates OpenAI’s ‘head of preparedness’ role to tackle AI risks

The new role, ‘head of preparedness’ comes amid growing concern over AI’s links to teenage suicides and what experts call “AI psychosis” tied to ChatGPT and similar chatbots.

In the job description, the newly appointed head of preparedness will expand, strengthen and guide OpenAI’s safety standards scale with the capabilities of the systems it develops.

The hire will also lead the technical strategy and execution of OpenAI’s Preparedness framework, its framework explaining the AI giant’s approach to tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm.

They will also be directly responsible for building and coordinating capability evaluations, threat models, and mitigations that form a coherent, rigorous, and operationally scalable safety pipeline, the company revealed.

Meanwhile, CEO Sam Altman, added: “This is a critical role at an important time; models are improving quickly and are now capable of many great things, but they are also starting to present some real challenges.

“The potential impact of models on mental health was something we saw a preview of in 2025; we are just now seeing models get so good at computer security they are beginning to find critical vulnerabilities.”

He continued: “We have a strong foundation of measuring growing capabilities, but 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 both in our products and in the world, in a way that lets us all enjoy the tremendous benefits.

“These questions are hard and there is little precedent; a lot of ideas that sound good have some real edge cases. “

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