Not many companies have a futurist, let alone a chief futurist.

But OpenAI, feeling perhaps that it is helping to invent the future, promoted Josh Achiam to that position last February.

In his eight-year career at the firm, Achiam had worked mainly on AI safety. That was probably reassuring. Many people worry about recent episodes where sophisticated AI models have hacked private medical data and bank accounts.

He offers a few thoughts at his website, Just Josh: “My goals are to ensure that the long-term future of humanity is good and that faster-than-light space travel becomes real.”

“Much closer to science fiction” than ever?

When introduced at OpenAI last February, Achiam had this to say:

Ten years ago AI could neither talk nor reason; today it can do both. Three years ago AI was virtually nonexistent as a consumer product; today one in 10 people use ChatGPT regularly. AI research is progressing at a pace and in a direction that is much closer to science fiction than any previous comparison point.

Our most important challenge is to make sure that this Intelligence Age actually helps people. This means seeing around corners to figure out what can go wrong, and equipping people, scientists, and policymakers with information and ideas to begin addressing problems early. It also means noticing what can go right and accelerating those trends by giving people the information they need to see the potential.

“Introducing Our Chief Futurist,” The Prompt: Insights from OpenAI Global Affairs, Feb 11, 2026

But then, in July, he abruptly quit OpenAI

Achiam did not offer the tech media a reason for his departure. But at Wired, Maxwell Zeff offers an interesting bit of background:

OpenAI has reorganized its safety, product, and research teams numerous times since ChatGPT launched in 2022, after which the company grew rapidly from a small research lab into a massive tech company. In 2024, OpenAI announced the formation of a “mission alignment team” led by Achiam that was tasked with upholding the company’s mission. OpenAI disbanded the group in February and announced that Achiam would be taking on a new role as chief futurist…

“OpenAI’s Chief Futurist Is Leaving the Company,” July 7, 2026

He reveals that other recent departures include Miles Brundage (head of policy research), Steven Adler (research on dangerous capabilities of AI models), Andrea Vallone (research on psychological issues around chatbot use) and Jan Leike (how to keep AI under human control). Both Brundage and Adler started non-profits to advocate stronger safety standards; Vallone and Leike joined Anthropic.

Zeff also offers a telling detail:

Earlier this year, he [Achiam] testified in federal court that he interrupted Elon Musk’s parting speech when he left OpenAI in 2018, remarking that the then-billionaire’s plan to develop AGI at Tesla could come at the expense of safety. Musk allegedly responded by calling Achiam a “jackass,” a moment that Dario Amodei (now the CEO of Anthropic) and David Luan (who went on to become the head of Amazon’s AGI lab) commemorated by gifting Achiam a statue of a golden donkey’s rear end, inscribed with the words, “Never stop being a jackass for safety.” “Leaving the Company”

So, is Achiam a “jackass” or should we heed his concerns?

We’d better find out. In July, at Financial World, news editor Faruk Imamovic commented, “Joshua Achiam’s decision to leave OpenAI later this month removes one of the company’s longest-serving voices on safety and mission alignment at a moment when its internal structure is already shifting.”

In an X post on August 31, Achiam was warning that “there are going to be rogue AIs that exist in the world, that will replicate in the wild, and that will attempt to acquire resources for themselves. There will be rogue AIs that try to get money and power.”

So far, he has 1.1 million views for that prophecy.

He is not a Doomer but he thinks we must be prepared for the risks. For example, “The concept of ‘identity’ for a rogue AI may be much more malleable than for that of a person; it just has to be, in essence, a self-replicating idea.”

His current job? He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, with a focus on “how rapid progress in AI may create new public policy and national security needs.”

OpenAI has not assigned a new futurist yet and apparently has no plans to do so.

At COSM 2026, Reality Check: AI boom — or bust?

Achiam will be joining Andrew Mayne at the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale, Arizona for a Fireside Chat on Thursday, Nov 19, at 9:00 am, titled “Foretelling the Future: AI Boom or Bust?”

Mayne was OpenAI’s original prompt engineer and is a widely read novelist. But none of the AI security threats Achiam is concerned about are likely to be fiction. If you want to know more of the facts about AI and security/safety, register here. You can still get the standard rate of $1450.