Some career news
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
I am pleased to share exciting news: on July 6, I will be joining OpenAI at Head of Strategic Futures, a new team created to shape frontier AI policy within the company. I will remain a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.
What will this team be doing? The Strategic Futures team will be a small, high-agency team within OpenAI, reporting to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon, charged with shaping frontier AI policy, which is to say matters pertaining to: catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments (particularly the U.S. Federal Government), and society. Its work will cover both public-facing policy (for example, proposals for legislation) and internal governance within the lab, working in close collaboration with members of the technical staff, the Preparedness team, the legal team, policy staff from the National Security and Global Affairs teams, and the executive leadership of the company.
The collaboration with technical staff is particularly important for the Strategic Futures team, not only to understand the shape of emerging AI risks (though this is key), but also to understand how AI is developing more broadly. With that said, machine-learning or AI policy expertise is not a requirement; I am hoping to build a heterodox team, bringing together a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out.
Hyperdimensional was built on two foundational intuitions: (1) that frontier labs themselves would be a new kind of institution under the sun, with a new set of arrangements with the other institutional pillars of our society and (2) that transformative AI itself will be a governance technology, not just requiring some degree of “regulation” but also enabling altogether new kinds of governance. Over time, I added a third key intuition: that, almost by necessity, some of the most important frontier AI governance decisions are likely to be shaped by, if not fully made by, the frontier labs themselves. In other words, internal governance will be more central to the future of AI than most people realize.
This is all well and good, but it is also hopelessly abstract. And so it will remain from the vantage point one is afforded outside of a frontier lab. In order to advance those intuitions, to make them more concrete, I realized that I simply must “go inside.” This is the core reason I have taken this role. I believe it is impossible for me to advance the ball forward without doing so (this is an artifact of my particular career pathway, to be clear; I am not suggesting it is impossible to do good AI policy work from outside of a lab).
I had been having these thoughts about “going in” for a few months, when, by stroke of luck, OpenAI asked me if I had interest in this role. I am grateful and honored that they did so, and I look forward to learning from my new colleagues across all the teams at OpenAI. I believe the talent density at this company rivals any company on Earth, so it is a particular thrill—and I must admit more than a little intimidating—to be invited to contribute to its efforts.
Now, about Hyperdimensional itself: this publication will remain both active and independent. As has been the case for the past several months, publication volume will be in the range of 2-3 posts per month, though perhaps higher if circumstances allow. I plan to share news about the work my team at OpenAI is doing, but also to continue the type of analysis and writing I’ve been doing here all this time.
In the interest of full clarity, the writing I do here will be fully mine: no one at OpenAI will have preapproval or editorial discretion over what I write here. The same independence will be true for my X account and for my forthcoming book, to be published next year with Penguin Press (the same schedule as initially announced). This means that I can publicly depart from the positions of OpenAI and its leadership. While I do not anticipate any such divergence to be stark (having spoken extensively with OpenAI leadership over the years, I have a good sense that we share many of the same objectives and values; indeed, that’s why I took the job!), I want to be clear with you, upfront, that I plan to maintain my intellectual independence when commenting on matters of AI policy. Ensuring this independence was the key factor for me in taking this role. Without it, I could not have accepted.
With this said, there are some exceptions to the above that I hope you will find reasonable. Say, for instance, that there is prominent litigation involving OpenAI. As an OpenAI employee, there may be legal barriers to my commenting publicly on such a topic, particularly if my job involves knowledge of non-public information related to the lawsuit. The same would be true, of course, of future product releases and other confidential company plans.
One other nuance I should add, in the interest of complete candor: at all points in my career, I have tried to match the tone and tenor of my public communication with my role. I communicated publicly when I was a White House staffer—with a level of frankness that longtime D.C. insiders routinely told me was abnormally high, I might add. But my public communications were markedly distinct from how I communicated after I left government and became a think tank scholar again. Similarly, I will have to discover, over time, the most appropriate register to speak with in this new role. The salient thing, however, is that the process of discovery, and every decision made along the way, will be mine, and not directed by my employer.
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The first phase of AI governance—the one that lasted from about November 2022 until late 2025 or early 2026—was “easy mode.” A new and more difficult phase has begun. There will be more politics and higher stakes. I am comforted in the knowledge that we enter this new era will extraordinarily capable technological tools to help us build a secure future and a better world—tools whose power grows ever more swiftly with each passing month. I hope only that we, and our human institutions, can grow with them. This, as ever, is our work, and it continues apace.
Talk to you after a while.
Dean