Paul Christiano joins OpenAI Foundation board
OpenAI has appointed alignment researcher Paul Christiano to its nonprofit Foundation board and its Safety and Security Committee, adding a prominent internal critic of industry safeguards to post-recapitalization governance.
OpenAI said Christiano will serve on the OpenAI Foundation Board and as a non-voting observer on the board of OpenAI Group PBC, the for-profit entity the Foundation controls and holds a significant equity stake in.
He also joins the Foundation's Safety and Security Committee, chaired by Zico Kolter. The SSC, per OpenAI, "provides governance over safety and security practices across all of OpenAI, including OpenAI Group PBC."
Christiano is currently a Senior Tech Advisor at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) at NIST, within the U.S. Department of Commerce, work that spans two administrations. At CAISI and its predecessor, the U.S. AI Safety Institute, he worked on evaluating frontier models — including capabilities with national security implications — and on mitigating the associated risks. He founded the nonprofit Alignment Research Center and led alignment research at OpenAI from 2017 to 2021, where he contributed foundational work on reinforcement learning from human feedback.
OpenAI framed the appointment as strengthening governance "with people prepared to challenge prevailing assumptions," noting Christiano "has been an independent voice on whether the industry's safeguards are adequate."
The company tied the move to the governance structure established by its October 2025 recapitalization and to commitments made in connection with year-long reviews by the California and Delaware attorneys general.
The announcement did not say whether Christiano is leaving or retaining his CAISI role, nor did it specify a start date or term.