AI safety hire discovers the role has no seat at the table
AISafety Researcher Hired To Slow Down Launch Misses First Quarterly Check In
The position was created after a board inquiry into risk management but reports to no one on a regular schedule.
Dr. Patricia Okonkwo, 34, joined Meridian AI as Head of Launch Safety on a Tuesday in September after the company's board demanded visible investment in risk mitigation. According to her employment packet, she was tasked with conducting technical review of model outputs, human feedback pipelines, and deployment readiness before any system reached production. The company's announcement of her hire mentioned her PhD in AI alignment and a decade at a research institute. The first quarterly check-in to discuss her findings was scheduled for this week. She has not received a calendar invitation to any meeting in that series.
I kept showing up to the wrong conference room because nobody sent me the calendar invite.
"I kept showing up to the wrong conference room because nobody sent me the calendar invite," Okonkwo said by email on Tuesday. She reported that she had completed preliminary assessments of the current deployment, identified three categories of concern, and prepared a slide deck for stakeholder review. The deck remains unseen. When she attempted to schedule the quarterly check-in herself, she received an automated response that the organizer's calendar was fully booked through the end of next quarter.
The role of launch safety reviewer sits outside Meridian's standard reporting structure, according to the org chart emailed to Okonkwo on her second day. She does not report to the VP of Engineering, the Chief Product Officer, or the Head of Legal and Compliance. An internal wiki entry lists her as reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, but that entry was last updated in June by an employee who no longer works at the company. The CEO's calendar is maintained by an executive assistant who does not recognize Okonkwo's name.
At press time, the product team had shipped a minor update to Meridian's core model without notifying Okonkwo's department. The change was announced internally on a Slack channel that she was never added to. A spokesperson for the company confirmed that the safety review process was ongoing and that the organization remained committed to responsible deployment, adding that quarterly touchbases would resume as soon as scheduling became feasible.