The last six months have been a wild ride.
In early May, we wrapped up our most significant projects to date. The Cooperative AI Research Fellowship was a great success, with two fellows even being acqui-hired by change.org for their Habermolt project. We also completed our research grant with the UK AI Security Institute and submitted the resulting work to NeurIPS (currently under review, awaiting final outcomes!). While things have gone well for the org, our mission seems more important than ever as we see AI progress continuing to skyrocket. The frontier keeps advancing with no signs of slowing down. Recent breakthroughs in AI-facilitated mathematics, rogue agents and open source all point to an unprecedented rate of development, and dangers that we don't have good solutions for.
After such an intense period I needed to decompress, and decided to go on a Zen meditation retreat. However, on this retreat I received some incredible news that we had been awarded two years of funding to start the Cape Institute for Safe AI (CISAI). I was hardly able to concentrate on meditation as my mind raced with all the possibilities that this created.
The essence of CISAI is that we want to double down on our hub building efforts, as physical hubs are a keystone of field-building in emerging ecosystems. Providing a central, established point will enable us to more effectively coordinate a broader movement. We truly believe that building Cape Town into a world-class technology hub is possible, and that we can be a key element of pushing the frontier in a more sensible direction — shaping technological progress in the direction of safety, security, and sovereignty. As such, we are rebranding AI Safety South Africa as the Cape Institute for Safe AI, as our small team will be largely be focused on building out this hub. Rebrand aside, we are still enthusiastic about connecting with AI safety talent and professionals across the country and note opportunities to get involved below.
Concretely, we’ve signed a lease for a large office space in Kloof Street, that will house 50 permanent desks and many hot-desk seats. We will be hosting a grand opening to our new space in November, which you can sign up for below. Our aim is to fill this space with the most interesting, talented professionals we can find, who are aiming to steer AI progress for the better. In this vein, we are hosting the PIBBSS fellowship in November, where we will host 40 researchers in our new space! Alongside this, I’m honoured to announce that we are partnering with the Foresight Institute and will be their first affiliate-run “xNode”, alongside their nodes in SF and Berlin.
To handle all this growth, I’ve hired three new members for our capacity-building team, outlined below:
Isabella is a program manager focused on delivering CISAI’s fellowships, residencies, university groups, and community programs. She brings a background in strategy, partnerships, and social impact, and is passionate about building the human capabilities needed to navigate an era of AI.
Josh is a community manager who helps build a welcoming, inclusive, and engaged CISAI community. He brings a background in software engineering and AI safety research, and is interested in artificial intelligence and interpretability. He holds an MSc in Biomedical Computing from the Technical University of Munich and a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Cape Town.
Alexa is a marketing and operations professional who coordinates projects, manages timelines, and helps create strong customer and community experiences. As Workspace Manager, she keeps CISAI’s coworking space running smoothly, supporting members and visitors while managing and improving the space. She is also the founder of CAYA Thrift, a sustainable fashion brand.