Just now, OpenAI's chief futurist has left his job, and he was once called a "stupid ass" by Elon Musk.

Just now, OpenAI's Chief Futurist Joshua Achiam announced his departure on X.

This is no ordinary personnel change.

Within OpenAI, the Chief Futurist role sits at the intersection of AI safety, policy, and the company's mission, tasked with researching the potential risks and opportunities the world may face as AI capabilities continue to advance.

And Joshua Achiam was precisely one of the core figures along OpenAI's safety and mission alignment track.

Nine years ago in 2017, he joined OpenAI as an intern. In his early days, he was a research scientist focused on AI safety, working on safety constraint research in deep reinforcement learning.

Later, he led OpenAI's Mission Alignment team, responsible for upholding the company's founding mission:

Ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.

This past February, OpenAI disbanded the Mission Alignment team, and Joshua transitioned to the role of the company's Chief Futurist.

Yet just five months later, Joshua announced he would officially leave the company he had served for nine years on July 24th.

As for the reasons behind his departure, Joshua did not reveal much.

He simply stated that his decision was not triggered by a single specific incident, nor was it a spontaneous impulse — it had been a long-considered choice.

Towards Safe AGI

In his lengthy post on X, Joshua referred to this departure as his "graduation".

He wrote that he joined OpenAI in 2017 as a 25-year-old intern (a graduate of UC Berkeley). Back then, computers could not truly hold conversations with humans, let alone demonstrate any form of reasoning.

Today, at 34, he is a father of a two-year-old child, and computers have begun solving cutting-edge scientific problems.

Joshua described these nine years as "a decade that unfolded with changes spanning centuries".

He remains optimistic about the future.

I believe we can create a world where "meeting everyone's basic needs" is no longer a problem to solve; instead, we will see it as a disgrace to set the bar so low. I believe we can achieve a world full of peace, unprecedented prosperity, and all kinds of unimaginable social and scientific possibilities. No matter what I do next, I will continue to work alongside all of you to make this vision a reality.

He concluded his post with a single line:

To safe AGI.

This line perfectly encapsulates the position Joshua held at OpenAI over the past nine years.

According to WIRED, OpenAI has not yet announced who will succeed Joshua in this role. The position sits at the convergence of the company's AI safety and policy teams, with responsibilities including researching the potential harms and benefits brought by the rise of AI.

Prior to this, Joshua also collaborated with senior executives including OpenAI's Head of Global Affairs Chris Lehane to advance government regulatory frameworks aligned with OpenAI's mission.

In other words, he was not a "futurist" who only made predictions.

More accurately, his core work at OpenAI was to constantly remind the company of that fundamental question, even as model capabilities surged forward at full speed:

Where exactly is this path ultimately leading?

The Man Who Interrupted Elon Musk

Looking back at Joshua's career at OpenAI, the most dramatic moment took place in 2018.

During the high-profile legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI earlier this year from April to May, Joshua testified in court, recalling a farewell speech Elon Musk gave in 2018 before leaving OpenAI:

At that event, Joshua interrupted Musk, pointing out that his plan to develop AGI at Tesla would likely come at the cost of safety.

Reports say Musk immediately lashed out, calling Joshua a "jackass".

Later, this incident became an "urban legend" inside OpenAI.

Dario Amodei, now CEO of Anthropic, and David Luan, who later became the head of Amazon's AGI lab, even presented Achiam with a golden trophy engraved with the line:

"Never stop being the jackass for safety."

Every Time a Top Safety Leader Leaves, OpenAI Goes Through Changes?

On Reddit, users quickly added Joshua's name to OpenAI's growing list of departing safety leads.

Some joked:

Ilya left, Jan left, and now Joshua is gone. Every time someone in charge of alignment departs, something notable seems to happen at OpenAI.

This meme is obviously exaggerated, but it reflects a real trend: OpenAI's safety track has seen no shortage of changes over the past two years.

The Jan mentioned by users refers to Jan Leike, who previously co-led OpenAI's Superalignment team focused on keeping advanced AI models under human control. In 2024, he left OpenAI to join Anthropic.

In the same year, Miles Brundage, OpenAI's former Head of Policy Research, and Steven Adler, who previously led research on dangerous capabilities of AI models, also left one after another to found non-profit organizations dedicated to pushing AI labs to adhere to stricter safety and security standards.

Andrea Vallone, who previously researched how ChatGPT responds to users in psychological or emotional distress, also left OpenAI at the end of 2025 to join Anthropic, the team where her former colleague Jan Leike works.

Joshua is the latest name added to this departure chain.

Meanwhile, OpenAI itself is adjusting the relationship between its safety, research, and policy teams.

WIRED noted that over the past year, OpenAI has been working to narrow the gap between its AI research team and policy team, aiming to develop rules and standards that can better anticipate the direction of technological development. Researchers including Boaz Barak, Noam Brown, and Adrien Ecoffet have also begun participating more extensively in policy-related work.

On the other hand, former White House AI advisor Dean Ball joined OpenAI this week as the company's Head of Strategic Futures. He will have a short handover period with Joshua, and is expected to continue collaborating with researchers and policy leads afterward.

This makes Joshua's departure feel even more subtle.

On one hand, OpenAI is tightening the integration of "safety" and "policy"; on the other hand, the person who once led Mission Alignment and later served as Chief Futurist has chosen to step outside the lab at this exact moment.

Joshua wrote in his departure letter: The world now knows the secret (of building AGI). Today, it has become possible to continue advancing this mission beyond the walls of frontier labs.

This is perhaps the most thought-provoking line in the entire announcement.

Over the past decade, the pace of AI development has indeed been exhilarating. OpenAI is no longer just a small research lab — it has evolved into a new type of institution that must simultaneously navigate products, capital, policy, legal proceedings, and public expectations.

But at the end of the day, the past decade is only a tiny segment of AI's long journey, and the road ahead may prove far longer.

Long enough to wear even the mightiest Goliath down to a tiny figure.

References

[1]https://x.com/jachiam0/status/2074605703281693175

[2]https://www.wired.com/story/openai-chief-futurist-joshua-achiam-is-leaving-the-company/

This article originates from the WeChat Official Account "QbitAI", authored by henry, and is republished by 36Kr with authorization.