Kamilė Lukošiūtė has joined the OpenAI Foundation as a Program Officer to lead its cyber resilience workstream, citing her research estimating annual cybercrime damages at around $500 billion. The move follows her work at GovAI, where she focused on AI-related cyber risks and the economic impact of cybercrime.
TL;DR
- Kamilė Lukošiūtė joins OpenAI Foundation to lead cyber resilience efforts, following her research on AI and cyber risks.
- Her work at GovAI estimated annual cybercrime damages at around $500 billion, highlighting the need for stronger defenses.
- The OpenAI Foundation is a separate entity from OpenAI, focusing solely on ensuring AI benefits humanity.
What happened
Kamilė Lukošiūtė has joined the OpenAI Foundation as a Program Officer, where she will build and lead its cyber resilience workstream. She announced the move on LinkedIn this week, following a year of research at GovAI focused on AI-related cyber risks. Lukošiūtė's new role at the Foundation will concentrate on strengthening cyber resilience as advanced AI systems change both threats and defenses for critical infrastructure.
The appointment brings a researcher with experience across GovAI, Cisco, Robust Intelligence, and Anthropic into the Foundation. Her work at GovAI focused on cyber misuse risks from AI, including how extreme misuse scenarios could inform model evaluations, capability thresholds, and safeguards for frontier systems. She co-authored research with John Halstead and Luca Righetti that estimated annual cybercrime damages at around $500 billion, comprising direct losses and defense spending.
Lukošiūtė's work has also examined the spread of cyber capabilities beyond closed frontier AI systems. She argued that open-weight models could soon become sufficiently capable for offensive cyber operations, calling for greater investment in defenses that do not depend on AI developers retaining visibility into model usage. Her background in AI security at Cisco, Robust Intelligence, and a residency at Anthropic feeds into her new role at the OpenAI Foundation.
Why it matters
Lukošiūtė's move to the OpenAI Foundation highlights the growing importance of cyber resilience in the face of increasingly capable AI systems. Her research on the economic impact of cybercrime underscores the need for stronger defenses to protect critical infrastructure, such as payments, energy, water, and medicine. The Foundation's focus on cyber resilience is crucial as AI becomes more useful for both offensive and defensive cyber operations.
The distinction between the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI, the company that builds models, is important. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization focused solely on ensuring AI benefits humanity. Lukošiūtė's work will be instrumental in developing the next generation of controls and deploying them to the infrastructure we all depend on. Her experience across various organizations and her published work on AI security measurement will be valuable in this endeavor.
Key facts
- Kamilė Lukošiūtė joined the OpenAI Foundation in July 2026 as a Program Officer to build its cyber resilience workstream.
- She previously worked as a Research Scholar at GovAI, focusing on AI-related cyber risks and the economic impact of cybercrime.
- Her research estimated annual cybercrime damages at around $500 billion, with a 90% confidence interval of $100 billion to $1 trillion.
- Lukošiūtė has experience in AI security at Cisco, Robust Intelligence, and a residency at Anthropic.
- She co-authored research with John Halstead and Luca Righetti on the global economic cost of cybercrime.
- Lukošiūtė argued that open-weight models could soon become sufficiently capable for offensive cyber operations.
- The OpenAI Foundation is a separate entity from OpenAI, focusing solely on ensuring AI benefits humanity.
- She will work alongside Lennart Heim, Yonadav Shavit, Wojciech Zaremba, and others in the cyber resilience workstream.
Context
The growing importance of cyber resilience in the AI landscape cannot be overstated. As AI systems become more capable, the threats they pose to critical infrastructure increase. Lukošiūtė's move to the OpenAI Foundation underscores the need for stronger defenses and the development of the next generation of controls. Her research and experience make her a valuable addition to the Foundation's efforts in this area.
The distinction between the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI is crucial. While OpenAI focuses on building advanced AI models, the Foundation is dedicated to ensuring that AI benefits humanity. This separation allows the Foundation to concentrate on critical issues like cyber resilience without the conflicts of interest that might arise from being tied to a for-profit entity.
Lukošiūtė's background in physics and her transition to AI research highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Her work on measuring AI security in real-world conditions is particularly relevant as the industry grapples with the ethical and practical implications of advanced AI systems. Her move to the OpenAI Foundation is a significant step in addressing these challenges.