SAIA 2025-2026 Programs

SAIA leaders will run a weekly seminar covering the risks, proposals, and needs relevant to ensuring that advanced AI systems are built and used safely. It is based on the AI Safety Fundamentals Governance course designed by experts. Our fellowship is application based and runs once per quarter
Beginning in Winter 2026, the AI Policy lecture series will host a brief lecture and Q&A with legal scholars who specialize in AI policy and governance.
Biquarterly field trips and events focused on humanities- and philosophy-adjacent aspects of AI safety.
Beginning in Winter 2026, AI War Gaming is a 6-session program during which we will come together to collectively and concretely envision a potential future for AI and society through 2030.
This whitepaper aims to design and propose an end goal for AI's benefits to be redistributed appropriately while maintaining incentive for innovation, and evaluate intermediary steps to bridge the present with this proposed end goal.

SAIA’s group meetings are a general Schelling point for SAIA members and community members interested in AI safety to meet up. Members gather to discuss current events and AI news, review a brief on the topic, and then open the floor for discussion guided by key questions all over free boba. All backgrounds and interests are welcome.
SAIA will host quaterly socials for club members
IBAR is a weekend retreat connecting promising students with AI safety researchers and professionals working on critical challenges. SAIA co-hosts it with alignment student groups at UC Berkeley, USC, UCLA, and Caltech.

Our flagship speaker series, with speakers 1-3x a quarter. After announcements about upcoming SAIA opportunities and global AI safety news, a speaker will present some AI safety research or lead a discussion, then we’ll have a social afterwards for attendees. Past speakers include Dan Hendrycks, Nicholas Carlini, and Evan Hubinger.
SAIA Members read and discuss two chosen papers on technical AI safety.
The curriculum and lectures for SAIA’s former course, STS 10SI: Introduction to AI Safety, run at Stanford are available here. The course is entirely open-sourced and is an excellent resource for those interested in self-studying AI safety.

Program FAQS

Not a problem at all! We have plenty of members and leaders who have never coded. Our governance/humanities orientated events do not require a coding background, and our weekly meeting is open to all and beginner friendly. If you want to learn more, we recommend taking our AI governance fellowship, self-studying STS 10SI, or taking CS 120/CS 121.
Mitigating the risks of AI is an interdisciplinary problem that should not just involve computer scientists! Philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive science, law, policy, engineering, and anthropology are among the many disciplines that are critical to effectively regulating, improving, and adapting to AI.
Different events have different recommended backgrounds. Generally, we recommend that those attending our technical events have a firm basis in neural networks and classic AI models. A big bonus is a solid foundation in large language models, especially transformer architectures.
Join our newsletter and Slack — see our get involved page for more information.
Our events are hosted in-person on Stanford campus. Some events may be virtual or have hybrid accommodations, but please reach out to our team to check.

This reading group is open to the public and meets to discuss recent AI policy and governance issues. The goal is gain a better understanding of current problems in AI governance, and understand of how different stakeholders are attempting to solve AI governance-related problems.
SAIA leaders will run a weekly seminar covering the risks, proposals, and needs relevant to ensuring that advanced AI systems are built and used safely. It is based on the AI Safety Fundamentals Governance course designed by experts. Our fellowship is application based and runs once per quarter
A²E² is a new project aiming to bring real-world stories, philosophy, and a speaker series together to show how ethical AI practices are not just socially responsible but also crucial for successful careers and companies. SAIA hosted its inaugural mixer and plans to unroll fully in the Fall.
SAIA went on our first field trip to the Misalignment Museum in SF, where we generously received a guided tour by Museum Curator Audrey Kim.
SAIA and Stanford Improvisors (SImps) co-hosted the workshop “The Play of AI: What role does Humanity play?“ Members participated in super fun improvising games and exercises, and learned from a discussion panel.

SAIA’s weekly group meetings are a general Schelling point for SAIA members and community members interested in AI safety to meet up. After announcements about upcoming SAIA opportunities and global AI safety news, a speaker will present some AI safety research or lead a discussion, then we’ll have a boba social afterwards for attendees. Past speakers include Dan Hendrycks, Nicholas Carlini, and Evan Hubinger.
SAIA will host quaterly socials for club members
IBAR is a weekend retreat connecting promising students with AI safety researchers and professionals working on critical challenges. SAIA co-hosts it with alignment student groups at UC Berkeley, USC, UCLA, and Caltech.

SAIA Members read and discuss two chosen papers on technical AI safety each week
SAIA is piloting a workshop following the ARENA (Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator) curriculum for SAIA members to provide technical upskilling.
SPAR is a virtual, part-time program that allows students and professionals to work together to develop valuable experience in AI Safety through mentorship. SPAR is now its own organization outside of SAIA, and we highly recommend people participate. Learn more here.
This event is a space of SAIA members to think critically and share ideas about careers in AI safety. Attendees are encouraged to work on career-related activities, like applying for internships or drafting career-adjacent emails and scheduling meetings. This event is co-run with Stanford Effective Altruism.
Each quarter, SAIA leaders review submitted research from members and compile a research report for the website.
The curriculum and lectures for SAIA’s former course, STS 10SI: Introduction to AI Safety, run at Stanford are available here. The course is entirely open-sourced and is an excellent resource for those interested in self-studying AI safety.
CS 120 [Formerly STS 10SI] Introduction to AI Safety and MS&E 338: Aligning Superintelligence are SAIA unaffiliated courses at Stanford that we recommend to those interested in AI safety.