OpenAI Brings in Ex-Anthropic Talent Ahead of Launch of Powerful AI Systems

Dylan Scandinaro, a member of the Anthropic technical team, has been named Head of Preparedness at ChatGPT developer OpenAI. This recent development was announced by CEO Sam Altman on 4 February. The firm will soon be dealing with very strong models, according to Altman, and they will need corresponding protections.

Announcement Made Through X

In a post on X, Altman wrote, “Things are about to move quite fast and we will be working with extremely powerful models soon. This will require commensurate safeguards to ensure we can continue to deliver tremendous benefits.” Altman went on to say that OpenAI will be spearheading preparations for the mitigation of these serious dangers, with Dylan serving as its leader. Among all the candidates Altman has encountered, he is the most qualified for the position. Without a doubt, he has a lot of work ahead of him, "but I will sleep better tonight." Altman added.

In order to implement the adjustments, Altman is excited to collaborate closely with Dylan. Separately, Scandinaro announced his joining OpenAI in an update he posted on X. He wrote an article criticising the catastrophic and unfixable damage caused by AI models that are developing at an alarming rate.

Profile of Dylan Scandinaro

From May 2025 until February of this year, Scandinaro was a member of Anthropic's technical staff, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to this, he was a Product Manager at Google DeepMind, focusing on synthetic data for Gemini, from September 2022 to May 2025. In addition to his background at Everyday Robots, he has worked at Palantir and Unity Technologies.

The search for a new Head of Preparedness was announced last year by OpenAI. The position would be responsible for mitigating the dangers connected with artificial intelligence, specifically those pertaining to cybersecurity and mental health. In addition to offering the candidate shares in the company and a salary of $550,000 (around INR 4.94 crore), the corporation made the announcement.

The Preparedness team, headed by Aleksander Madry of MIT's Center for Deployable Machine Learning, was initially announced by the firm in 2023. After Madry and other researchers in the department left, the business shifted their attention to artificial intelligence thinking and moved them to a new post. With the influx of claims from departing employees that OpenAI was not doing enough to ensure employee safety, the effort to recruit a new Head of Preparedness gained momentum. There have been other lawsuits brought against the firm involving incidences of teen suicide.