OpenAI proposes development of global AI standards to guide alignment, RSI

OpenAi founder Sam Altman speaks during the G20 Innovation Ministerial on September 2, 2026 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Sean Rayford | Getty Images News | Getty Images

OpenAI on Monday posted a set of proposals for safety and security in the development of frontier artificial intelligence with a heavy focus on alignment research and a computing technique known as recursive self-improvement, or RSI.

"Navigating this transition safely requires alignment research to keep pace with these capabilities so that the systems we and others build remain aligned with human values and under human control," the company said in a blog post.

OpenAI called for international cooperation to develop frontier standards and recommended building on the work of existing AI safety institutes around the world.

The ChatGPT maker said these technical standards should focus on frontier AI models and developers, as well as benefit-risk management for automated AI researchers, which includes RSI.

RSI has excited AI developers over its potential to create foundation models that can upgrade themselves without human involvement.

But advancements within RSI have led some technologists to raise concerns that foundation model makers could lose control of the underlying technology or fail to account for potential unintended consequences as the AI systems become more complicated and ubiquitous across the Internet.

"Fully autonomous RSI is not happening today, and we should not pursue it unless and until it can be done safely," the OpenAI blog post said. "Done without appropriate care and caution, RSI could result in humans losing practical control over AI development, unable to provide oversight on research processes they no longer understand."

The OpenAI blog post mentioned the Hugging Face agent hack, which did not involve the RSI technique, as a kind of "preview of the kinds of risks that could become much more severe without robust safeguards and alignment."

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