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Jakub Pachocki
OpenAI’s chief scientist who wrote in September 2026 that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring well enough to keep scaling at maximum speed responsibly, that he expects and hopes for voluntary slowdowns until shared safety bars are established, and that international coordination on AI development must become a top government priority.
Roles
- 2021 – May 2024Director of Research, OpenAIJoined OpenAI in 2017; as Director of Research led the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five (the 2021 start is Wikipedia's date; OpenAI's own announcement dates only his research leadership, to 2017).Source →
- 14 May 2024 – presentChief Scientist, OpenAISucceeded Ilya Sutskever, announced by Sam Altman on the day Sutskever's departure was made public.Source →
On the record
6 Sept 2026 · Post · OpenAI
We may be used to thinking of AI as tools, but some agents will be pursuing their own objectives. They will find ways to collaborate with people, by bargaining with, tricking or blackmailing them.
Chief Scientist, OpenAI at the time
From the section on scalable defense, which also says the idea of racing forward at all costs seems absurd once one internalizes the seriousness of the stakes.
6 Sept 2026 · Post · OpenAI
This is a time that calls for extreme caution. I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.
Chief Scientist, OpenAI at the time
Written directly after saying that internal results give him a strong expectation that the current speed of progress could be sustained into recursive self-improvement.
6 Sept 2026 · Post · OpenAI
Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer. I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established.
Chief Scientist, OpenAI at the time
The essay's closing paragraph, which goes on to call for international coordination on future AI development to become a top priority for governments.