Miles Brundage

Miles Brundage is an American AI policy and governance researcher best known for leading policy research at OpenAI and serving as the company's senior advisor for AGI Readiness before leaving in October 2024. He spent more than six years at OpenAI, where his AGI Readiness role focused on whether the company and the wider world were prepared for artificial general intelligence. In a widely covered departure note he argued that neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab was ready for advanced AI and that he could be more useful working independently. Before OpenAI he was a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, and he is a co-author of influential reports including "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence" (2018) and "Toward Trustworthy AI Development: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims" (2020). In January 2026 he launched a nonprofit, the AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI), where he is Executive Director, to promote independent auditing of frontier AI systems. ^[10][11][14]

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Who is Miles Brundage?

Miles Brundage is a researcher who works on the policy and governance of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the safe development and release of frontier systems and on holding AI developers accountable through external verification. He is most widely associated with his time at OpenAI, where he led policy research and ended as senior advisor for AGI Readiness, and with his October 2024 departure to work on AI policy independently. ^[10][11] Since January 2026 he has been Executive Director of AVERI, a nonprofit focused on third-party auditing of advanced AI. ^[14][15]

Background and education

Brundage earned a bachelor's degree in political science from George Washington University in 2010. ^[1] After graduating he worked for about two years at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), part of the United States Department of Energy, and he held an internship at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. ^[1][2]

He then moved into academic study of emerging technology. He completed a Ph.D. in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University in 2019, a program housed in the university's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. ^[1][3] His doctoral work centered on how societies anticipate and govern fast-moving technologies, with AI as a primary case. ^[3]

From 2016 to 2018 Brundage was a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, where he was part of the group that later became the Centre for the Governance of AI. ^[1][4] His research there looked at methods for analyzing AI development scenarios and the policy responses they might call for. ^[4] He has continued to hold a research affiliate or analyst status with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). ^[2]

What is Miles Brundage known for in AI policy?

Brundage's published work sits at the intersection of AI safety and AI governance. Several of his reports have been cited widely in academic and policy discussions about how advanced AI should be developed and released.

The malicious use of artificial intelligence

In February 2018 Brundage was the lead author of "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation," a report written with Shahar Avin, Jack Clark, and more than twenty other researchers drawn from universities, civil society groups, and industry. ^[5][6] The report surveyed how AI capabilities could expand security threats across digital, physical, and political domains, including automated cyberattacks, the use of drones, and synthetic media used for disinformation. It set out four high-level recommendations, among them closer collaboration between policymakers and researchers and more attention to the dual-use nature of AI research. ^[5][6] The document is often described as one of the earlier coordinated attempts to map the security risks of modern AI.

Publication norms and the staged release of GPT-2

Brundage became closely associated with debates over how AI labs should release powerful models. When OpenAI built GPT-2 in 2019, the organization chose not to publish the full 1.5 billion parameter model immediately, citing concerns about misuse such as mass-produced misleading text. ^[7][8] Instead it used a staged release, putting out a small 124 million parameter version in February 2019, a 355 million parameter version in May, a 774 million parameter version in August, and the full model in November. ^[8]

Brundage was a co-author of the August 2019 report "Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Models," written with Irene Solaiman, Jack Clark, Amanda Askell, and others, which explained the reasoning behind the staged approach and the tradeoffs of different release strategies. ^[7][8] The episode prompted broad discussion about whether withholding model weights was a useful safeguard or an obstacle to open research, and the term "release norms" entered common use in the field partly through this work.

Verification and auditing of AI claims

In April 2020 Brundage was a lead author, again with Shahar Avin and a large group of co-authors, of "Toward Trustworthy AI Development: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims." ^[9] The report argued that developers need ways to make claims about the safety, security, fairness, and privacy of their systems that outside parties can actually check. It analyzed ten mechanisms spanning institutions, software, and hardware, including third-party auditing, red-teaming exercises, bias and safety bounties, and audit trails. ^[9] This focus on external verification later became the organizing idea of his independent work.

What did Miles Brundage do at OpenAI?

Brundage joined OpenAI in 2018. ^[1][10] He started as a research scientist on the policy team and went on to become the organization's head of policy research, working in particular on the responsible deployment of language generation systems. ^[1][2] In his later years at the company he held the title of senior advisor for AGI Readiness. ^[10][11]

The AGI Readiness team advised OpenAI's leadership on the company's capacity to handle increasingly capable AI and on whether society was prepared to manage systems that might match or exceed human ability at many tasks. ^[10][11] The mandate covered topics such as forecasting AI progress, frontier AI regulation, the economic effects of AI, and the safe deployment of new systems. ^[12]

Why did Miles Brundage leave OpenAI?

Brundage announced his departure from OpenAI on October 23, 2024, in a post titled "Why I'm Leaving OpenAI and What I'm Doing Next." ^[10][12] By his own account he had been at the company for over six years. ^[12] OpenAI said at the time that it would disband the AGI Readiness team and distribute its members across other parts of the organization. The economic research work moved under the company's new chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, and some remaining projects went to Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's head of mission alignment. ^[10][11]

In the note Brundage gave several stated reasons for leaving. He wrote that he wanted to publish more freely and work on research topics that he did not have time for inside the company, that it was difficult to be impartial about an organization while being part of it, and that he had completed much of what he set out to do in the AGI Readiness role. ^[12] He said he believed he could have more impact as a researcher and advocate in the nonprofit sector. ^[10][12]

The most quoted line from the post was his assessment of readiness for advanced AI. He wrote, "In short, neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready, and the world is also not ready." ^[12] He added that this view was not especially controversial among OpenAI's leadership and that the question was whether the company and the world would get ready in time. ^[12] Reporting on the departure placed it within a wider series of exits from OpenAI in 2024, which included chief technology officer Mira Murati and other senior staff. ^[11][13]

OpenAI responded by saying it supported his decision. A company spokesperson said, "We fully support Miles' decision to pursue his policy research outside industry and are deeply grateful for his contributions," and described his move to independent research as a chance to have an impact on a wider scale. ^[10][11]

What is AVERI, and what does Miles Brundage do now?

After leaving OpenAI, Brundage continued to write and speak about AI governance, including on his Substack, and he took on advisory roles. He became a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Progress and an advisor to the research group Epoch AI and to the RAND Corporation. ^[1]

In January 2026 he announced the launch of the AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute, known as AVERI, a nonprofit he had spent the previous year co-founding and where he serves as Executive Director. ^[14][15] AVERI is set up as a United States 501(c)(3) organization, and it describes its mission as "making third party auditing of AI systems effective and universal." ^[14] The institute defines frontier AI auditing as rigorous third-party verification of AI developers' safety and security claims, and evaluation of their systems and practices against relevant standards, based on deep, secure access to non-public information. ^[14][15] Brundage has summarized the underlying argument by saying that "AI companies shouldn't be allowed to grade their own homework." ^[14]

AVERI says it aims to study what auditing standards should look like and to support policies that would push frontier developers toward external auditing, rather than to carry out audits itself. ^[14][15] Reporting at launch said the organization had raised about 7.5 million dollars toward a target of 13 million dollars, intended to support a staff of around fourteen across two years of operations. ^[14][15] Named funders included Halcyon Futures, Fathom, Coefficient Giving, former Y Combinator president Geoff Ralston, Craig Falls, the Good Forever Foundation, Sympatico Ventures, and the AI Underwriting Company, along with donations from current and former non-executive employees of frontier AI companies. ^[14] The launch coincided with a research paper, co-authored by Brundage and more than thirty researchers, that set out a framework of "AI Assurance Levels" describing increasingly demanding tiers of verification for AI systems. ^[14][15]

Why is Miles Brundage influential in AI governance?

Brundage is frequently described in coverage of the field as one of the more prominent figures working on AI policy. ^[10][11] His reports on malicious use, release strategies, and verifiable claims are recurrent reference points in research and policy writing about how powerful AI should be built and shared. ^[5][7][9] His public departure from OpenAI, and his statement that no frontier lab was ready for advanced AI, drew wide attention because it came from someone who had worked inside one of the leading labs. ^[10][11][13] His later turn toward independent auditing, expressed through AVERI, reflects a broader argument in AI governance that external checks are needed alongside the internal safety work done by the companies themselves. ^[14][15]

See also

• OpenAI
• Artificial general intelligence
• AI governance
• AI safety
• GPT-2
• Future of Humanity Institute

References

1. Miles Brundage. "About Me." milesbrundage.com. https://www.milesbrundage.com/ ↩
2. Center for a New American Security. "Dr. Miles Brundage." https://www.cnas.org/people/dr-miles-brundage ↩
3. "ASU student explores new frontiers of artificial intelligence, responsible innovation." ASU News, February 28, 2017. https://news.asu.edu/20170228-asu-student-explores-new-frontiers-artificial-intelligence-responsible-innovation-through ↩
4. Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford. "Miles Brundage." https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/miles-brundage/ ↩
5. Brundage, Miles, Shahar Avin, Jack Clark, et al. "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation." arXiv:1802.07228, February 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07228 ↩
6. Centre for the Governance of AI. "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation." https://www.governance.ai/research-paper/the-malicious-use-of-artificial-intelligence-forecasting-prevention-and-mitigation ↩
7. Solaiman, Irene, Miles Brundage, Jack Clark, et al. "Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Models." arXiv:1908.09203, August 2019. https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09203 ↩
8. OpenAI. "Better Language Models and Their Implications." https://openai.com/index/better-language-models/ ↩
9. Brundage, Miles, Shahar Avin, et al. "Toward Trustworthy AI Development: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims." arXiv:2004.07213, April 2020. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07213 ↩
10. Field, Hayden. "OpenAI disbands another safety team, as head advisor for 'AGI Readiness' resigns." CNBC, October 24, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/24/openai-miles-brundage-agi-readiness.html ↩
11. Wiggers, Kyle. "Longtime policy researcher Miles Brundage leaves OpenAI." TechCrunch, October 23, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/23/longtime-policy-researcher-miles-brundage-leaves-openai/ ↩
12. Brundage, Miles. "Why I'm Leaving OpenAI and What I'm Doing Next." Miles's Substack, October 23, 2024. https://milesbrundage.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-openai-and-what-im ↩
13. "OpenAI stung by departure of yet another AI safety expert." Fortune, October 24, 2024. https://fortune.com/2024/10/24/openai-miles-brundage-suchir-balaji-ai-safety-copyright-sam-altman-chatgpt/ ↩
14. "Exclusive: Former OpenAI policy chief debuts new institute called AVERI, calls for independent AI safety audits." Fortune, January 15, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/15/former-openai-policy-chief-creates-nonprofit-institute-calls-for-independent-safety-audits-of-frontier-ai-models/ ↩
15. Brundage, Miles. "The Launch of AVERI." Miles's Substack, January 2026. https://milesbrundage.substack.com/p/the-launch-of-averi ↩