On Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that Aleksander Madry, the company’s AI safety leader, is working on a new and crucial research project as part of a restructuring of the preparedness team. Altman shared this update on X, noting that Joaquin Quinonero Candela and Lilian Weng will temporarily lead the preparedness team during this transition.
The preparedness team is responsible for assessing the readiness of OpenAI’s AI models for artificial general intelligence. According to an OpenAI spokesperson, Madry will assume a more prominent role within the research organization following this shift.
Joaquin Quinonero Candela and Lilian Weng will oversee the preparedness team to unify the company’s safety efforts. The Information reported that researcher Tejal Patwardhan will handle much of the team’s work.
These changes come as OpenAI’s chatbots, which are capable of human-like conversations and generating multimedia content from text, raise increasing safety concerns. Earlier this year, the Microsoft-backed company established a Safety and Security Committee, led by board members including CEO Sam Altman, in preparation for training its next AI model.
