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OpenAI Launches Paid Safety Fellowship for Independent AI Risk Research

The pilot funds outside researchers, reflecting scrutiny over dissolved in-house safety groups.

Overview

  • OpenAI is recruiting for a new Safety Fellowship that backs independent work on how to test, control, and reduce risks in advanced AI systems.
  • Selected fellows receive a $3,850 weekly stipend, about $15,000 per month in compute credits, and mentorship from OpenAI researchers, with no access to the company’s internal systems.
  • Applications close May 3, notifications are due July 25, and the program runs from September 14, 2026 to February 5, 2027 with options to work from a Berkeley workspace or remotely.
  • Each fellow must produce a paper, benchmark, or dataset in areas such as safety evaluation, robustness, scalable mitigations, privacy-preserving methods, agent oversight, ethics, or high-severity misuse.
  • The launch came within hours of a New Yorker investigation that reported OpenAI had dissolved its superalignment, AGI Readiness, and Mission Alignment teams since 2024, shaping coverage of how the company approaches safety.