Ex-OpenAI Researcher Paul Christiano ​Named AISI’s Head of AI Safety

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced the appointment of Paul Christiano as U.S. AI Safety Institute’s (AISI) Head of AI Safety.

The AISI was formed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under President Biden's directive, aiming to aid the Department of Commerce in fulfilling its duties outlined in the President's significant Executive Order.

“To safeguard our global leadership on responsible AI and ensure we’re equipped to fulfill our mission to mitigate the risks of AI and harness its benefits, we need the top talent our nation has to offer,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

“Developing guidelines that will strengthen our safety and security, engaging with civil society and business, and working in lockstep with our allies are fundamental to addressing this generation-defining technology. Because of President Biden’s leadership, we’re cultivating the talent pool necessary to achieve these critical goals,” she added.

Christiano, who is also a researcher in the field of AI, will oversee the design and execution of tests for cutting-edge AI models, with a focus on evaluating models for capabilities relevant to national security.

He will provide guidance on conducting these evaluations and implementing risk mitigation strategies to enhance the safety and security of these frontier models. 

He previously worked at OpenAI where he spearheaded pioneering work on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a foundational AI safety technique. He is considered one of the principal architects of RLHF.

Christiano holds a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.