OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently argued that society may need to accept some negative consequences of artificial intelligence because of its broader benefits. Now a new report by Fortune has revealed that the ChatGPT-maker is introducing a new interview process which is aimed at accessing how prospective employees would help ensure AI benefits humanity. The contrasting developments highlight how the ChatGPT maker is simultaneously advocating for wider acceptance of AI-related risks while strengthening its focus on mission-driven hiring as the technology becomes increasingly powerful.
The new ‘mission interview ’ at OpenAI
According to Fortune, OpenAI has begun piloting what it calls a “mission interview” for candidates applying to certain teams, starting with marketing and human resources. The goal, OpenAI told Fortune, is to give candidates dedicated space to explain how they’ll contribute to the company’s mission — ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.The interview isn’t designed to extract a single correct answer. Instead, OpenAI says it’s meant to assess how candidates actually think, including their judgment and their ability to weigh trade-offs — qualities the company considers increasingly essential as AI firms work to harness a technology carrying both significant benefits and real risks. A company representative said skepticism and disagreement are welcome in these conversations, as is intellectual diversity more broadly.
How it works
To keep the process independent, the person conducting the mission interview comes from a different team than the one the candidate is applying to join. OpenAI is also building out a training program that employees can complete to become certified interviewers for this process, though the program is still in its early stages of ramping up.
Part of a broader push to standardize hiring
The introduction of a formal mission interview reflects OpenAI’s attempt to bring more consistency to its evaluation process as the company continues to grow rapidly. OpenAI currently employs roughly 8,000 people worldwide and has 830 open roles as of this writing. Standardizing how candidates are assessed is aimed at giving the company a more consistent measure for evaluating new hires across different teams, rather than leaving mission-alignment checks to vary interviewer by interviewer.
Not the first company to test for “mission fit”
OpenAI isn’t alone in building this kind of evaluation into its hiring process. Several major tech companies, including Meta and Amazon, use their own versions of a mission or culture-fit interview. Amazon, for instance, trains certain employees as “bar raisers” — interviewers pulled from outside the hiring team specifically to assess whether a candidate meets the company’s broader Leadership Principles.Rival AI lab Anthropic reportedly takes a more direct approach. According to Axios, Anthropic interviewers test candidates with a blunt question aimed at determining whether they’re joining the company for its mission or simply for the money — a particularly pointed question given how lucrative positions at leading AI labs have become.
The money complicates the mission question
That tension between mission and compensation is hard to ignore at companies like OpenAI, where many roles currently offer salaries exceeding $300,000, often with substantially more once stock compensation is factored in. According to posts on the anonymous professional network Blind, one software engineer with six years of experience reportedly received a total compensation offer from OpenAI worth $935,000, including a $385,000 base salary and $2.2 million in restricted stock units vesting over four years. A separate Blind post claimed Anthropic had offered another candidate $620,000 in total compensation.
