Sam Altman Offers $555K Salary To Fill Most Daunting Role In AI

OpenAI is offering a $555,000 salary (plus equity) to recruit a new 'head of preparedness,' a high-pressure role tasked with anticipating and mitigating extreme AI risks. 'This will be a stressful job, and you'll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,' said Sam Altman as he launched the hunt to fill 'a critical role' to 'help the world.' The Guardian reports: In what may be close to the impossible job, the 'head of preparedness' at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons. That is before the successful candidate has to start worrying about the possibility that AIs may soon begin training themselves amid fears from some experts they could 'turn against us.'

The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluating and mitigating emerging threats and 'tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm.' Some previous executives in the post have lasted only for short periods. Altman said on X as he launched the job search: 'We have a strong foundation of measuring growing capabilities, but we are entering a world where we need more nuanced understanding and measurement of how those capabilities could be abused, and how we can limit those downsides both in our products and in the world, in a way that lets us all enjoy the tremendous benefits. These questions are hard and there is little precedent.'

One user responded sardonically: 'Sounds pretty chill, is there vacation included?' What is included is an unspecified slice of equity in OpenAI, a company that has been valued at $500 billion.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.