UK AI Safety Institute

Extracted Attributes

• Type

  Government research organization

• Staff Size

  Over 100 technical specialists

• Former Name

  AI Safety Institute (AISI)

• Predecessor

  Frontier AI Taskforce

• Current Name

  AI Security Institute (renamed February 2025)

• Annual Funding

  £66,000,000

• Compute Access

  Priority access to over £1.5 billion of compute

• Official Website

  www.aisi.gov.uk

• Parent Organization

  Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

• International Office

  San Francisco, California, United States

• Headquarters Location

  London, United Kingdom

Timeline

• The UK AI Safety Institute is officially established during the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, evolving from the Frontier AI Taskforce. (Source: AI Security Institute - Wikipedia)

  2023-11-01

• The UK and the US announce an agreement to collaborate on AI safety evaluations and conduct joint safety tests. (Source: Artificial intelligence safety institute - Wikipedia)

  2024-04-01

• The UK AI Safety Institute announces plans to open an office in San Francisco, United States, to work closely with leading AI companies. (Source: Artificial intelligence safety institute - Wikipedia)

  2024-05-01

• International leaders at the AI Seoul Summit agree to form an international network of AI Safety Institutes including the UK. (Source: Artificial intelligence safety institute - Wikipedia)

  2024-05-21

• The UK AI Safety Institute is officially renamed the AI Security Institute. (Source: Making sense of the UK’s AI Security Institute | Ada Lovelace Institute)

  2025-02-01

Artificial intelligence safety institute

An artificial intelligence safety institute is a type of state-backed organization aiming to evaluate and ensure the safety of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models, also called frontier AI models. AI safety gained prominence in 2023, notably with public declarations about potential existential risks from AI. During the AI Safety Summit in November 2023, the United Kingdom and the United States both created their own AISI. During the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024, international leaders agreed to form a network of AI Safety Institutes, comprising institutes from the UK, the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Canada and the European Union. In 2025, the UK's AI Safety Institute was renamed the "AI Security Institute", and its US counterpart became the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).

Web Search Results

• UK AISI Research Grants (Apply Now) | AI Safety Directory

  ## About This Funding Opportunity The UK AI Safety Institute (AISI) is a government-backed organization established in 2023 to advance the science of AI safety. As part of the UK government's leadership position on AI safety following the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, AISI provides research grants to academic researchers, independent scientists, and research organizations working on frontier AI safety challenges. The institute represents one of the most significant government investments in AI safety research globally and operates with a mandate to develop evaluation tools, advance safety science, and support the broader AI safety research ecosystem. [...] AISecurity & SafetyS&S # UK AISI Research Grants grantactive Last updated:April 3, 2026 Funder : UK AI Safety Institute Geographic Scope : United Kingdom ## Description The UK AI Safety Institute funds research to advance the science of AI safety, with a focus on evaluating and mitigating risks from frontier AI models. Grants support work on AI evaluations, red-teaming methodologies, interpretability research, and safety benchmarking. The institute collaborates with international partners and serves as a model for government-led AI safety efforts. ## Eligibility UK researchers International collaborators Academic institutions ## Focus Areas evaluationred teaminginterpretabilitymonitoringai policy ## About This Funding Opportunity [...] AISI's research priorities include evaluating frontier AI models for dangerous capabilities, developing techniques for understanding model behavior, creating safety benchmarks and evaluation frameworks, and advancing the science of AI alignment. The institute works closely with both UK-based and international researchers, reflecting the global nature of AI safety challenges. Grants support a range of activities from fundamental research to applied tool development, with particular emphasis on work that has practical implications for evaluating and improving the safety of the most capable AI systems.

• Making sense of the UK’s AI Security Institute | Ada Lovelace Institute

  Originally announced as the AI Safety Institute at the UK-hosted AI Safety Summit in November 2023 (and later renamed to the AI Security Institute in February 2025), AISI was established to provide government with independent insight into the risks from AI. It was conceived as a source of trusted evidence that regulators and policymakers could draw on to devise ‘effective policy and regulatory responses’, not as a body for regulating AI itself. [...] AISI is a UK government research body that evaluates the capabilities and safeguards of advanced AI models, sharing these findings with policymakers and the national security community. Its evaluations focus on a specific set of catastrophic and national security risks. Its current programme of work does not cover many of the AI-driven harms already materialising in the UK, like harms to children, the production of non-consensual intimate imagery and bias causing discrimination. AISI’s evaluations primarily look at model capabilities, testing what models can do in controlled settings rather than how harms manifest when AI products are deployed in the real world. [...] AISI sits within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as part of the UK civil service. To support its work, it receives £66m in annual funding, priority access to over £1.5 billion of compute and a salary structure more competitive than the rest of the civil service. It has assembled over 100 technical specialists – among the largest concentrations of AI-testing expertise in any government – with experts hailing from world-leading AI labs and academic institutions. ## What does AISI do? AISI tests the capabilities and safeguards of state-of-the-art AI models against a defined set of risks, examining both systems already released to the public and, where it can secure voluntary access, unreleased ones.

• AI Security Institute - Wikipedia

  British research organisation AI Security Institute | Formation | November 2023; 2 years ago (2023-11) | | Services | AI safety research | | Parent organization | Department of Science, Innovation and Technology | | Website | www.aisi.gov.uk | The AI Security Institute (AISI) is a research organisation under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology of the United Kingdom that aims "to equip governments with a scientific understanding of the risks posed by advanced AI". It conducts research, and develops and tests mitigations. [...] The organisation was created as the AI Safety Institute and renamed in February 2025. Its creation followed the world's first major AI Safety Summit that was held in Bletchley Park in 2023. The institute's stated goal is "building the world's leading understanding of advanced AI risks and solutions, to inform governments so they can keep the public safe". It is designed like a startup in the government "combining the authority of government with the expertise and agility of the private sector".

• Artificial intelligence safety institute - Wikipedia

  Politico reported in April 2024 that many AI companies had not shared pre-deployment access to their most advanced AI models for evaluation. Meta "Meta (company)")'s president of global affairs Nick Clegg said that many AI companies were waiting for the UK and the US AI Safety Institutes to work out common evaluation rules and procedures. An agreement was indeed concluded between the UK and the US in April 2024 to collaborate on at least one joint safety test. Initially established in London, the UK AI Safety Institute announced in May 2024 that it would open an office in San Francisco, where many AI companies are located. This is part of a plan to "set new, international standards on AI safety", according to UK's technology minister Michele Donelan. ## International network [edit] [...] ## Timeline [edit] In 2023, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, expressed his intention to "make the UK not just the intellectual home but the geographical home of global AI safety regulation" and unveiled plans for an AI Safety Summit. He emphasized the need for independent safety evaluations, stating that AI companies cannot "mark their own homework". During the summit in November 2023, the UK AISI was officially established as an evolution of the Frontier AI Taskforce, and the US AISI as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Japan followed by launching an AI safety institute in February 2024. [...] AI safety gained prominence in 2023, notably with public declarations about potential existential risks from AI. During the AI Safety Summit in November 2023, the United Kingdom and the United States both created their own AISI. During the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024, international leaders agreed to form a network of AI Safety Institutes, comprising institutes from the UK, the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Canada and the European Union. In 2025, the UK's AI Safety Institute was renamed the "AI Security Institute", and its US counterpart became the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). ## Timeline [edit]

• Safety first? | Ada Lovelace Institute

  World leaders at Bletchley acknowledged that urgent action must be taken to address the risks that advanced AI systems raise. But with the notable exceptions of the European Union and China, governments (including the UK) have so far chosen not to create binding regulations on advanced AI systems. Instead, several countries like the UK have chosen to establish AI safety institutes (AISIs) to improve their understanding of the most powerful AI systems and the risks they could pose. Under one of the voluntary commitments secured by the UK prior to the Bletchley AI Safety Summit, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic committed to provide the UK AISI with pre-release access to their latest advanced models to conduct evaluations for various risks. [...] With the next global summit taking place in Seoul next week, what have we learned about the state of AI safety in the interim and what role should these emerging national AI safety institutes play in the wider governance system for AI? In this blog we focus on the UK’s AI Safety Institute as a model for other jurisdictions and suggest – drawing on forthcoming research – that its current approach is so far failing to provide appropriate assurance that AI systems are safe. Fixing this will require a renewed focus on context-specific evaluations of AI systems in collaboration with sectoral regulators and new statutory powers to replace the existing voluntary approach. ### The state of AI safety [...] Skip to content Ada Lovelace Institute Blog # Safety first? Reimagining the role of the UK AI Safety Institute in a wider UK governance framework Matt Davies , Andrew Strait , Michael Birtwistle 17 May 2024 Reading time: 12 minutes Keyword : Ada position Share this page There have been significant developments in the field of AI safety even since November’s global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. The UK, United States, Japan and Singapore now have their own AI safety institutes and the European Union’s AI Office has begun to set itself up with a mandate to evaluate ‘frontier models’.(#_ftn1)