OpenAI announced on September 9, 2026 the appointment of AI safety researcher Paul Christiano to its Foundation Board, where he will serve as a non-voting observer and join the Safety and Security Committee chaired by Zico Kolter. Christiano, currently a senior technical advisor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, previously founded the Alignment Research Center and led OpenAI’s alignment research team from 2017 to 2021. Board Chair Bret Taylor credited him with helping “define the field of AI alignment,” while Christiano said alignment “remains a difficult technical problem” as AI capabilities advance.
