OpenAI fills safety job listed at $555,000 with hire from rival Anthropic

By Alicia Tang

 

In December, OpenAI made headlines when it posted a job listing for a “head of preparedness” with an eye-watering base pay range of as much as $555,000 a year. On Tuesday, Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman announced that the job has now been filled — by a staffer at rival AI model developer Anthropic.

 

Altman named Dylan Scandinaro, who was previously listed as being on an AI safety team at Anthropic, in a post on the social media platform X. In his role, Scandinaro will be responsible for, among other things, ensuring that the company safely develops and deploys AI systems and prepares for the risks they pose, according to the original listing. Scandinaro’s former employer has made a name for itself as a more safety-conscious AI developer.   

 

 

“One of the things that Anthropic has done really well is they’ve focused on guardrails and this concept of an AI Constitution, which is making sure that your AI that is deployed doesn’t go rogue,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh said. “That has helped their enterprise adoption.” 

 

OpenAI’s hiring of Scandinaro also underscores the ongoing talent wars being waged among the largest tech companies as they race to dominate the AI market.  

 

“We will be working with extremely powerful models soon,” Altman said in his post on X. Scandinaro “has his work cut out for him for sure.”