Center for AI Safety Inc

Programs

1. Compute Cluster: CAIS runs an initiative to provide free compute for research projects in ML safety, based on a cluster of 256 A100 GPUs with dedicated support staff to enable non-industry researchers to conduct advanced AI safety research requiring cutting-edge models. Since launching in 2022, the CAIS Compute Cluster has become a cornerstone of global AI safety research. By 2024, more than 400 researchers had used the cluster to conduct safety-focused ML research, generating 121 research papers and accumulating over 5,000 citations. The cluster continues to remove financial and technical barriers for non-industry researchers, enabling cutting-edge experimentation through free access to compute.

   $2,947,497 spent$256,598 earned by the program
   47% of program spending

2. Research: CAIS conducts foundational research aimed at mitigating societal-scale risks posed by artificial intelligence. We develop technical benchmarks and methods which improve AI safety. We also examine AI safety from a multidisciplinary perspective that incorporates safety engineering, complex systems, international relations, and other disciplines. In 2024, CAIS made major strides in foundational AI safety by developing new tools to measure and mitigate national-security risks posed by advanced models. This work included releasing the WMDP Benchmark, the first public dataset for evaluating hazardous knowledge in AI systems; creating circuit breakers, a defense mechanism that reliably prevents harmful outputs even under adversarial attacks; and coordinating Humanity's Last Exam, a global collaboration of nearly 1,000 contributors from more than 500 institutions across 50 countries to assess frontier-level reasoning across 3,000 expert-level questions. CAIS researchers also published 8 papers over the year.

   $1,168,082 spent
   19% of program spending

3. Not described on the e-filed return.

   $874,948 spent
   14% of program spending

4. Advocacy: CAIS works to bring AI safety research into practice through engagement with industry leaders, policymakers, and research labs, aiming to build awareness and establish standards for safe AI development and deployment. CAIS saw significant growth in public engagement, expanding its AI Safety Newsletter to 24,000 subscribers, a nearly threefold increase from the prior year, and contributing to over 100 media stories in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Through research translation, public communication, and collaboration with academic and industry partners, CAIS helped elevate AI safety as a mainstream concern and provided technical grounding for ongoing policy discussions at both state and federal levels.

   $777,874 spent
   12% of program spending

5. Field Building: CAIS builds and strengthens the AI safety research community through various initiatives designed to provide support and lower barriers to entry. In 2024, CAIS expanded its field-building initiatives by making AI safety education more accessible and interdisciplinary. We published the textbook Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics & Society, and launched an accompanying online course that enrolled 240 students from varied academic backgrounds. CAIS also strengthened community engagement by hosting workshops at major conferences including NeurIPS, where our workshop on agentic AI systems accepted 34 papers, and organizing AI safety socials at ICML and ICLR with 200+ researchers participating. The SafeBench competition, supported by Schmidt Sciences, attracted nearly 90 benchmark submissions to advance empirical AI safety evaluations.

   $520,385 spent
   8% of program spending

The 5 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $6,288,786.