Special projects
📰 OpenAI News
OpenAI lists special projects for impactful scientific work in AI, including detecting covert AI systems and building agents for online programming competitions
Action Steps
- Identify a problem area that aligns with OpenAI's special projects, such as detecting covert AI systems or building agents for online programming competitions
- Submit an application to start an effort on one of these problems at OpenAI
- Collaborate with other researchers and engineers to develop solutions to these problems
- Evaluate and refine the solutions to ensure they are effective and have a positive impact on society
Who Needs to Know This
AI researchers and engineers can contribute to these projects, which have broad implications for advancing AI and its long-run impact on society
Key Insight
💡 Impactful scientific work in AI requires working on problems that have broad implications and whose solutions matter
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🚀 OpenAI lists special projects for impactful AI research, including detecting covert AI systems & building agents for online programming competitions 💻
Key Takeaways
OpenAI lists special projects for impactful scientific work in AI, including detecting covert AI systems and building agents for online programming competitions
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# Special projects | OpenAI
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OpenAI
July 28, 2016
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# Special projects
Impactful scientific work requires working on the right problems—problems which are not just interesting, but whose solutions matter.
Illustration:Justin Jay Wang
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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, please[submit an application](https://openai.com/careers/).
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](https://openai.com/careers/)
* [Culture & Careers](https://openai.com/news/?tags=culture-careers)
* [2016](https://openai.com/news/?tags=2016)
## Authors
Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman
## Related articles
[View all company articles](https://openai.com/news/company/)
[DALL·E 3 is now available in ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise Product Oct 19, 2023](https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3-is-now-available-in-chatgpt-plus-and-enterprise/)
[Improving mathematical reasoning with process supervision Publication May 31, 2023](https://openai.com/index/improving-mathematical-reasoning-with-process-supervision/)
[](https://openai.com/)
* [Research](https://openai.com/research/index/)
* Products
* [Business](https://openai.com/business/)
* [Developers](https://openai.com/api/)
* [Company](https://openai.com/about/)
* [Foundation(opens in a new window)](https://openaifoundation.org/)
[Try ChatGPT(opens in a new window)](https://chatgpt.com/)
* Research
* Products
* Business
* Developers
* Company
* [Foundation(opens in a new window)](https://openaifoundation.org/)
[Try ChatGPT(opens in a new window)](https://chatgpt.com/)
OpenAI
July 28, 2016
[Company](https://openai.com/news/company-announcements/)
# Special projects
Impactful scientific work requires working on the right problems—problems which are not just interesting, but whose solutions matter.
Illustration:Justin Jay Wang
Loading…
Share
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, please[submit an application](https://openai.com/careers/).
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](https://openai.com/careers/)
* [Culture & Careers](https://openai.com/news/?tags=culture-careers)
* [2016](https://openai.com/news/?tags=2016)
## Authors
Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman
## Related articles
[View all company articles](https://openai.com/news/company/)
[DALL·E 3 is now available in ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise Product Oct 19, 2023](https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3-is-now-available-in-chatgpt-plus-and-enterprise/)
[Improving mathematical reasoning with process supervision Publication May 31, 2023](https://openai.com/index/improving-mathematical-reasoning-with-process-supervision/)
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