Impactful scientific work requires working on the right problems—problems which are not just interesting, but whose solutions matter. In this post, we list several problem areas likely to be important both for advancing AI and for its long-run impact on society.
We see these problems as having either very broad implications, or addressing important emerging consequences of AI development. If you are a strong machine learning expert and wish to start an effort on one of these problems at OpenAI, pleasesubmit an application.
1. Detect if someone is using a covert breakthrough AI system in the world.As the number of organizations and resources allocated to AI research increases, the probability increases that an organization will make an undisclosed AI breakthrough and use the system for potentially malicious ends. It seems important to detect this. We can imagine a lot of ways to do this—looking at the news, financial markets, online games,etc. 2. Build an agent to win online programming competitions.A program that can write other programs would be, for obvious reasons, very powerful. 3. Cyber-security defense.An early use of AI will be to break into computer systems. We’d like AI techniques to defend against sophisticated hackers making heavy use of AI methods. 4. A complex simulation with many long-lived agents.We’re interested in building a very large simulation with lots of different agents in it that can interact with each other, learn over a long period of time, discover language, and accomplish a rich variety of goals.
* Apply to start one of these projects
Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman
View all company articles
DALL·E 3 is now available in ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise Product Oct 19, 2023
Improving mathematical reasoning with process supervision Publication May 31, 2023
Language models can explain neurons in language models Publication May 9, 2023
Our Research * Research Index * Research Overview * Research Residency * OpenAI for Science * Economic Research
Latest Advancements * GPT-5.3 Instant * GPT-5.3-Codex * GPT-5 * Codex
Safety * Safety Approach * Security & Privacy * Trust & Transparency
ChatGPT * Explore ChatGPT(opens in a new window) * Business * Enterprise * Education * Pricing(opens in a new window) * Download(opens in a new window)
Sora * Sora Overview * Features * Pricing * Sora log in(opens in a new window)
API Platform * Platform Overview * Pricing * API log in(opens in a new window) * Documentation(opens in a new window) * Developer Forum(opens in a new window)
For Business * Business Overview * Solutions * Contact Sales
Company * About Us * Our Charter * Foundation * Careers * Brand
Support * Help Center(opens in a new window)
More * News * Stories * Livestreams * Podcast * RSS
Terms & Policies * Terms of Use * Privacy Policy * Other Policies
(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)
OpenAI © 2015–2026 Manage Cookies
English United States
