Yale Jackson Initiative on AI Safety

Yale Jackson MPP and graduate students regularly transition directly into critical decision-making positions across the US government, international bodies, and leading policy think tanks (CAISI, intelligence community, Deepmind to name a few). Having the resources and network from the broader AI safety ecosystem into Jackson before these individuals assume statecraft roles ensures that future policymakers understand technical alignment constraints and catastrophic risk scenarios well before high-stakes crises occur.

This past summer alone has showed the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities poses severe risks to humanity's relationship with this technology and collective truth-seeking in general. Our initiative will equip students to understand how advanced models can degrade societal sensemaking and also be responsible stewards of AI. Our mission is to ground the community in these dynamics and provide a practical entryway to broader catastrophic risk concepts without relying on narrow national security or adversarial framings.

Finally, while major AI safety talent infrastructure remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the Bay Area and London, establishing a dense, active node at Yale would be amazing for building out the East Coast ecosystem with proximity to New York. This pipeline would be amazing at attracting AI policy-minded talent across the region and channel them into high-leverage, long-term alignment and governance careers.

Our core organizing team brings direct experience across the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI), the US Intelligence Community, Google, TikTok, and philanthropic organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, backed by active Yale Jackson administration committed to scaling the AI safety ecosystem.