Paul Christiano joins OpenAI Foundation Board

We’re announcing the appointment of Paul Christiano to the OpenAI Foundation Board. He will be a non-voting observer on the OpenAI Group PBC Board.

Paul will also join the Safety and Security Committee (SSC) of the Foundation Board, working alongside its chair, Zico Kolter. The SSC provides governance over safety and security practices across all of OpenAI, including OpenAI Group PBC.

Paul brings government experience spanning two administrations through his work at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation⁠(opens in a new window) (CAISI) within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he is a Senior Tech Advisor¹. During his time at CAISI and its predecessor, the U.S. AI Safety Institute, Paul has worked on evaluating frontier AI models, including capabilities with national security implications, and on approaches to mitigating associated safety and security risks.

Paul is also the founder of the Alignment Research Center⁠(opens in a new window) (ARC), a nonprofit research organization focused on aligning advanced AI systems with human interests. From 2017 to 2021, Paul led alignment research at OpenAI and contributed foundational work on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). In this new capacity, Paul brings a distinct and technically grounded perspective to OpenAI’s governance decisions. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

Paul’s appointment builds on the governance structure established through OpenAI’s recapitalization in October 2025, including the commitments made in connection with the reviews conducted over the course of a year by the California Attorney General⁠(opens in a new window) and Delaware Attorney General⁠(opens in a new window). Their engagement helped strengthen the governance framework.