OpenAI has announced a new senior leadership position focused on managing the risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, with compensation exceeding $500,000 per year, reflecting the growing urgency around AI safety and governance.
OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman said the company is hiring a Head of Preparedness, a role aimed at identifying, assessing and mitigating emerging threats linked to increasingly powerful AI systems. Altman described the position as both critical and demanding, warning that the successful candidate will face intense pressure from day one.
“This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” Altman said while announcing the role.
According to OpenAI, the total compensation for the position stands at $555,000 annually, along with equity, making it one of the highest-paying AI safety roles in the industry.
Concerns Over AI Risks and Mental Health
Altman highlighted that OpenAI has already begun observing early warning signs of AI’s broader societal impact. In a post on social media platform X, he said 2025 offered a preview of how advanced AI models could affect mental health, as well as create new cybersecurity risks.
“This is a critical role at an important time,” Altman said. “Models are improving quickly and are capable of many great things, but they are also starting to present real challenges.”
He added that OpenAI is seeing AI systems become increasingly skilled in computer security, with some models already identifying serious software vulnerabilities, raising concerns about potential misuse.
Balancing Innovation and Safety
Altman explained that while OpenAI has internal systems to measure the growing capabilities of its AI models, the company now needs deeper expertise to understand how those capabilities could be exploited in the real world.
The Head of Preparedness role will focus on preventing harmful applications of AI across products and external use cases, while ensuring that innovation and legitimate benefits are not unnecessarily restricted.
OpenAI’s move comes amid rising global scrutiny of AI companies, as governments, researchers and industry leaders debate how to regulate increasingly powerful models without slowing technological progress.
Follow Startupbydoc for daily startup insights, funding news, IPO analysis, and business breakdowns.