How we think about safety and alignment
Summary
OpenAI outlines its safety and alignment principles, describing uncertainty, defense‑in‑depth, scalable methods, human control, and community effort to mitigate AI risks.
Key quotes
We treat safety as a science, learning from iterative deployment rather than just theoretical principles.
We consider misuse to be when humans apply AI in ways that violate laws and democratic values.
We consider misalignment failures to be when an AI’s behavior or actions are not in line with relevant human values, instructions, goals, or intent.
We stack interventions to create safety through redundancy.
We seek out safety methods that become more effective as models become more capable.
The page is part of OpenAI’s safety web‑section and presents a current snapshot of the principles guiding its AI safety and alignment work. It links to many internal resources such as the Preparedness Framework and evaluation suites. The content emphasizes iterative deployment, layered defenses, and collaborative community effort.