Cooper Saye joins OpenAI to work on recursive self-improvement evaluations, signaling AI safety’s new frontier

Cooper Saye, a former engineer at Jane Street and fintech company Ramp, joined OpenAI on July 31, 2026, as a Member of Technical Staff. His focus: recursive self-improvement evaluations. What RSI evaluations actually mean OpenAI is actively recruiting for roles in Recursive Self-Improvement Safety, with job postings based in San Francisco that specifically mention designing experiments and conducting evaluations to mitigate potential risks. In English: OpenAI is building a team whose entire job is to figure out whether AI systems are starting to accelerate their own research capabilities, and if so, whether humans can still maintain control over the process. Saye’s announcement on X highlighted his enthusiasm for contributing to efforts aimed at accelerating AI research through RSI evals. He also noted that the team at OpenAI is hiring for roles specifically focused on measuring progress toward RSI. Loss of control is the specific risk category that these evaluations are designed to address. When an AI system can improve its own code, training methods, or architecture without human intervention, the traditional safety playbook, where humans review and approve each iteration, starts...