--- category: AI & Effective Altruism created: 2026-09-22 relations: - end: 2021 fn: 1 role: head of alignment research start: 2017 type: employed_by with: '[[OpenAI]]' - fn: 1 type: founded with: '[[Alignment Research Center]]' - end: 2024-04 fn: 3 role: trustee start: 2023-09 type: member_of with: '[[Long-Term Benefit Trust]]' - fn: 4 role: head of AI safety, U.S. AI Safety Institute; later senior technical advisor, Center for AI Standards and Innovation start: 2024-04 type: employed_by with: '[[National Institute of Standards and Technology]]' - fn: 1 role: director and Safety and Security Committee member; non-voting observer on the OpenAI Group PBC board start: 2026-09-09 type: member_of with: '[[OpenAI Foundation]]' summary: OpenAI alignment lead and Open Philanthropy adviser who founded the Alignment Research Center, sat on Anthropic's trust, ran AI safety at NIST's AI Safety Institute and joined the OpenAI Foundation board in 2026. tags: - Person - OpenAI - Anthropic - OpenPhilanthropy - AISafety - NIST updated: 2026-09-23 --- Paul Christiano led alignment research at [OpenAI](/organizations/openai/) from 2017 to 2021 and contributed foundational work on reinforcement learning from human feedback; he then founded the [Alignment Research Center](/organizations/alignment-research-center/).[^1] In March 2017, when [Open Philanthropy](/organizations/open-philanthropy/) recommended 30 million dollars to OpenAI and a seat on its board for [Holden Karnofsky](/people/holden-karnofsky/), the grant page disclosed that "OpenAI researchers [Dario Amodei](/people/dario-amodei/) and Paul Christiano are both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in the same house as Holden," and that Karnofsky was engaged to Amodei's sister [Daniela](/people/daniela-amodei/).[^2] In September 2023 Christiano became one of the five original trustees of [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/)'s [Long-Term Benefit Trust](/organizations/long-term-benefit-trust/), the body empowered to elect a growing share of the board of the company founded by Dario and Daniela Amodei. He left in April 2024 to become head of AI safety at the [U.S. AI Safety Institute](/organizations/us-ai-safety-institute/).[^3] Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the appointment on April 16, 2024.[^4] The Action Fund of the [Center for AI Safety](/organizations/center-for-ai-safety/), an Open Philanthropy grantee, stated that it had led a bipartisan congressional effort that "secured $10 million to establish" the institute.[^5] ### U.S. AI Safety Institute On March 7, 2024, *VentureBeat* reported, citing unnamed sources, that staff members at the National Institute of Standards and Technology were threatening to resign over Christiano's expected appointment, that the hire "was allegedly rushed through the hiring process without anyone knowing until today," that it had come directly from Raimondo, and that staff feared his ties to effective altruism and longtermism "could threaten the institute's objectivity."[^6] The April 16 announcement placed him alongside the institute's director, Elizabeth Kelly, its chief technology officer, Elham Tabassi, and four other new leaders, among them the Stanford political scientist [Rob Reich](/people/rob-reich/) as senior advisor; the Commerce Department stated that Christiano would "design and conduct tests of frontier AI models, focusing on model evaluations for capabilities of national security concern."[^4][^7] Christiano had been expected to join the board of [METR](/organizations/metr/), the evaluations group his Alignment Research Center had incubated as ARC Evals; its announcements of September and December 2023 stated that "he declined involvement in light of his new role as Head of Safety at the US AI Safety Institute."[^8] In June 2025 the Commerce Department under [Howard Lutnick](/people/howard-lutnick/) renamed the institute the Center for AI Standards and Innovation.[^9] ### The OpenAI Foundation On September 9, 2026, the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit that controls OpenAI Group PBC, appointed Christiano to its board and its Safety and Security Committee, chaired by Zico Kolter, and made him a non-voting observer on the board of the for-profit company. The announcement described him as a senior technical advisor at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he had "worked on evaluating frontier AI models, including capabilities with national security implications," and stated: "As a Senior Technical Advisor, Paul will recuse himself from all OpenAI-related matters as well as all model evaluations." The board chair, [Bret Taylor](/people/bret-taylor/), said his "experience working on frontier AI safety and standards in government" would strengthen the board's oversight.[^1] [^1]: OpenAI Foundation, "Paul Christiano joins OpenAI Foundation Board," September 9, 2026. https://openaifoundation.org/news/paul-christiano-joins-openai-foundation-board [^2]: Open Philanthropy, "OpenAI, General Support," grant of March 2017, archived January 1, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250101012608/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-support/ [^3]: Anthropic, "The Long-Term Benefit Trust," September 19, 2023, with later updates. https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust [^4]: National Institute of Standards and Technology, "U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Announces Expansion of U.S. AI Safety Institute Leadership Team," April 16, 2024. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/04/us-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-announces-expansion-us-ai-safety [^5]: Center for AI Safety Action Fund, "2024 Annual Impact Report." https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66438c042d15b14b53b83006/68012dcfec6880aba24f528a_CAIS-ActionFund-ImpactReport_05.pdf [^6]: Goldman, Sharon. "NIST staffers revolt against expected appointment of 'effective altruist' AI researcher to US AI Safety Institute." *VentureBeat,* March 7, 2024. https://venturebeat.com/ai/nist-staffers-revolt-against-potential-appointment-of-effective-altruist-ai-researcher-to-us-ai-safety-institute [^7]: U.S. Department of Commerce, "U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Announces Expansion of U.S. AI Safety Institute Leadership Team," April 16, 2024, archived December 31, 2024. http://web.archive.org/web/20241231010954/https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/04/us-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-announces-expansion-us-ai-safety [^8]: Barnes, Beth. "ARC Evals is spinning out from ARC." METR, September 19, 2023, https://metr.org/blog/2023-09-19-spin-out-announcement/ ; METR, "ARC Evals is now METR," December 4, 2023. https://metr.org/blog/2023-12-04-metr-announcement/ [^9]: Mitchell, Elizabeth Troutman. "Trump Admin Changes Plan to Tap Former Anthropic Researcher to Direct Federal AI Safety Org." *The Daily Signal,* April 23, 2026. https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/04/23/trump-anthropic-researcher/