OpenAI’s outgoing leader says no company is ready for AGI

Miles Brundage, OpenAI’s senior advisor for AGI (aka human-level artificial intelligence) readiness, issued a stark warning when announcing his departure on Wednesday: No one is prepared for artificial general intelligence, including OpenAI itself.

“Neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready [for AGI]and the world is not ready either,” wrote Brundage, who spent six years helping shape the company’s AI security initiatives. “To be clear, I do not think this is a controversial statement from OpenAI management, and in particular it is a different issue than whether the company and the world are on track to be ready in due time“

The dissolution of Brundage’s “AGI Readiness” team, which comes just months after the company disbanded its “Superalignment” team tasked with long-term AI risk mitigation, highlights the growing tension between OpenAI’s original mission and its commercial ambitions. Business he is said to be facing pressure transform from a non-profit organization into a for-profit public benefit company within two years – otherwise it will risk the return of funds from the last investment round worth $6.6 billion. This shift towards commercialization has long worried Brundage, who expressed reservations back in 2019 when OpenAI first established its for-profit division.

In explaining his departure, Brundage cited growing restrictions on research and publishing freedom at the high-profile company. He stressed the need for independent voices in AI policy discussions, free from industry bias and conflicts of interest. By advising OpenAI management on internal readiness, he believes he can now make a greater impact on global AI management from outside the organization.

This departure may also reflect a deeper cultural divide within OpenAI. Many researchers have joined to advance AI research and now find themselves in an increasingly product-driven environment. Internal resource allocation has become a flashpoint – reports indicate that Leike’s team was denied computing power for security research before its final solution.

Despite these frictions, Brundage noted that OpenAI has offered support for his future work in the form of funding, API credits and early access to models, with no strings attached.