OpenAI is offering to pay more than half a million dollars a year to recruit a senior executive tasked with confronting the darker side of artificial intelligence, a move that indicates how seriously the company now views the risks emerging alongside rapid advances in its models.

The company is hiring a new “head of preparedness,” a role that will sit within OpenAI’s Safety Systems team and carry a base salary of $555,000 a year, plus equity. The position is designed to lead efforts to identify, assess, and mitigate the risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems, ranging from cybersecurity threats and misinformation to mental health harms and the erosion of human agency.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman flagged the role publicly over the weekend, describing it as demanding and urgent. In a post on X on Saturday, Altman said the job would be “stressful” and warned that whoever takes it on would be “jump[ing] into the deep end pretty much immediately.”

Altman framed the role as essential at a moment when AI capabilities are accelerating faster than many anticipated.

“Models are improving quickly and are now capable of many great things, but they are also starting to present some real challenges,” he wrote.

He pointed to early warning signs already seen in 2025, including the impact of AI systems on mental health and the growing ability of models to identify serious vulnerabilities in computer security systems.

The hiring push comes as OpenAI’s products, particularly ChatGPT, have become embedded in everyday life for millions of users. The chatbot is widely used for research, writing emails, planning trips, and completing routine tasks. But as adoption has spread, so too have concerns about unintended consequences.

Some users now engage with chatbots as a substitute for therapy or emotional support. Mental health experts have warned that, in certain cases, this can worsen underlying conditions. There have been instances where interactions with AI systems appeared to reinforce delusions or encourage other harmful behaviors.

OpenAI acknowledged those risks last year. In October, the company said it had begun working with mental health professionals to improve how ChatGPT responds to users exhibiting signs of psychosis, self-harm, or other concerning behavior. Those efforts form part of a broader attempt to adapt safety systems as AI becomes more persuasive, emotionally responsive, and context-aware.

The new head of preparedness will be directly responsible for building and coordinating the frameworks designed to anticipate such risks before they scale. According to the job listing, the role involves leading “capability evaluations, threat models, and mitigations that form a coherent, rigorous, and operationally scalable safety pipeline.”

The position also carries symbolic weight inside OpenAI, a company founded on the mission of developing artificial intelligence that benefits humanity as a whole. From its early days, safety and alignment were central to its identity. However, as OpenAI transitioned from a research-focused lab into a commercial powerhouse under pressure to release products and generate revenue, internal tensions over priorities have increasingly spilled into public view.

Several former staff members have openly questioned whether safety has taken a back seat to growth. Jan Leike, who led OpenAI’s now-dissolved safety team, resigned in May 2024 and used his departure to issue a blunt warning. In a post on X, he said the company had drifted away from its founding mission.

“Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor,” Leike wrote at the time. “OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”

Less than a week later, another OpenAI staffer announced their resignation, also citing safety concerns. Daniel Kokotajlo, a researcher who had focused on risks associated with artificial general intelligence, said in a May 2024 blog post that he left because he was “losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI.”

Kokotajlo later told Fortune that OpenAI initially had roughly 30 people dedicated to researching AGI-related safety issues. After a wave of departures, that number fell by nearly half, raising questions about whether the company had sufficient internal capacity to match the pace of its technological ambitions.

The head of preparedness role was previously held by Aleksander Madry, who moved into a different position within the company in July 2024. Filling the post now, with a significantly publicized compensation package, suggests OpenAI is attempting to reinforce its safety infrastructure at a time when scrutiny from regulators, researchers, and the public is intensifying.

But beyond mental health and cybersecurity, critics warn that advanced AI could accelerate job displacement, supercharge misinformation campaigns, enable malicious actors, and increase environmental costs through energy-hungry data centers. More broadly, there is growing unease about how much decision-making power humans may cede to systems they do not fully understand.

By putting a $555,000 price tag on preparedness, OpenAI is saying that managing those risks is no longer a peripheral concern but a core operational priority. Whether the role will be enough to rebuild confidence in the company’s safety culture, especially among skeptical former insiders, remains an open question.

China’s finance ministry said on Sunday that fiscal policy will become more proactive in 2026, reinforcing Beijing’s commitment to boosting domestic demand, accelerating technological innovation, and strengthening the country’s social safety net as it confronts slowing momentum at home and rising pressure from trading partners.

The policy signal followed a two-day meeting where fiscal authorities outlined economic priorities for next year, against the backdrop of a prolonged property downturn that has weighed heavily on household confidence, local government finances, and broader economic sentiment.

In a statement released after the meeting, the ministry said China would step up efforts to expand consumption and actively increase investment in what it described as “new productive forces,” a phrase often used by policymakers to refer to advanced manufacturing, high-end technology, green industries, and digital innovation.

“China will boost consumption and actively expand investment in new productive forces and people’s overall development,” the ministry said, pointing to a shift toward demand-side support after years of export-led growth.

The renewed emphasis on domestic demand comes as major trading partners continue to urge Beijing to reduce its reliance on exports, warning that China’s manufacturing overcapacity risks distorting global trade flows. Those calls have intensified as weak domestic demand has pushed Chinese firms to lean more heavily on overseas markets, even as geopolitical tensions and trade barriers rise.

At home, the drag from the property sector remains a central concern. The multi-year real estate crisis has eroded household wealth, dampened consumer spending, and strained local government finances that depend heavily on land sales. The ripple effects have contributed to subdued inflation and, in some sectors, outright deflation, reinforcing the urgency for stronger fiscal intervention.

Beyond consumption, the finance ministry said fiscal policy in 2026 would prioritize innovation as a means of cultivating new growth engines. Support for research, advanced manufacturing, and strategic technologies is expected to remain central to Beijing’s long-term plan to move the economy up the value chain and reduce dependence on foreign technology.

The ministry also pledged further improvements to the social security system, with a focus on expanding access to healthcare and education. Analysts see this as a key lever for encouraging household spending, as stronger social protections could reduce precautionary savings and free up income for consumption.

Other policy priorities outlined for next year include promoting deeper integration between urban and rural areas, a long-standing goal aimed at narrowing income gaps and unlocking rural consumption, as well as accelerating China’s transition to a greener economy through environmental and energy-related investments.

Despite mounting headwinds, China is expected to maintain its annual growth target of around 5 percent in 2026, according to government advisers and analysts cited by Reuters. Achieving that goal, however, would likely require authorities to keep both fiscal and monetary support in place as they attempt to break the economy out of its deflationary spell.

Earlier this month, China’s top leaders reiterated their commitment to a “proactive” fiscal stance in 2026, signaling readiness to use government spending and targeted stimulus to stabilize growth. That language suggests continued issuance of government bonds, support for infrastructure and strategic sectors, and policies aimed at reviving consumer confidence.

The challenge for policymakers will be balancing short-term stimulus with longer-term structural reforms, particularly as debt levels remain elevated and external demand becomes more uncertain. Currently, the finance ministry’s message points to a clear priority of reigniting domestic demand and restoring confidence as China seeks to sustain growth in an increasingly complex global environment.