ByteDance’s AI research unit Seed has formed an Alignment & Preparedness team and opened a global recruitment drive for 10 researchers, saying it will make a long-term investment in safety for its increasingly capable models. The positions are in Beijing, Shanghai and San Jose, California. Seed said the team will receive computing capacity and research resources comparable to those available to frontier-model teams.

The hiring comes as scrutiny of AI-agent safety grows in China and the United States, particularly as developers give agents autonomy to access the Internet. A Tuesday report by state-backed newspaper The Paper called Seed the first Chinese frontier AI lab to establish a standalone safety and alignment department. Reuters described ByteDance’s announcement as a rare public disclosure by a major Chinese AI developer of a dedicated frontier-model safety effort.

Seed’s research plans include safety training across model-development stages, automated vulnerability testing, tools to monitor and explain model behaviour, AI-agent testing environments and preparation for emerging risks. The team will also seek independent testing and work with universities and research institutions, applying its safety research during model training, evaluation and deployment. Seed said in a recruitment post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday that safety and alignment are becoming core capabilities for deploying models at scale.

The team is being established amid broader US-China discussions about AI guardrails, safety risks and channels for communicating about major AI-related incidents, while the countries compete for leadership in advanced AI. Seed described alignment as efforts to ensure advanced AI systems act in line with human goals and safety requirements, especially when performing complex, multi-step tasks.

ByteDance’s AI research unit Seed has formed an Alignment & Preparedness team and opened a global recruitment drive for 10 researchers, saying it will make a long-term investment in safety for its increasingly capable models. The positions are in Beijing, Shanghai and San Jose, California. Seed said the team will receive computing capacity and research resources comparable to those available to frontier-model teams.

The hiring comes as scrutiny of AI-agent safety grows in China and the United States, particularly as developers give agents autonomy to access the Internet. A Tuesday report by state-backed newspaper The Paper called Seed the first Chinese frontier AI lab to establish a standalone safety and alignment department. Reuters described ByteDance’s announcement as a rare public disclosure by a major Chinese AI developer of a dedicated frontier-model safety effort.

Seed’s research plans include safety training across model-development stages, automated vulnerability testing, tools to monitor and explain model behaviour, AI-agent testing environments and preparation for emerging risks. The team will also seek independent testing and work with universities and research institutions, applying its safety research during model training, evaluation and deployment. Seed said in a recruitment post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday that safety and alignment are becoming core capabilities for deploying models at scale.

The team is being established amid broader US-China discussions about AI guardrails, safety risks and channels for communicating about major AI-related incidents, while the countries compete for leadership in advanced AI. Seed described alignment as efforts to ensure advanced AI systems act in line with human goals and safety requirements, especially when performing complex, multi-step tasks.