This document presents an overview of LISA’s strategy.

Summary

The London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA)’s mission is to advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety for the public benefit by supporting education and research. We do this by providing professional AI safety projects in London with the resources, community, and support needed to positively impact the safe development and deployment of advanced AI systems. Currently, our research centre houses small organisations (e.g., Apollo Research, Leap Labs, BlueDot Impact), several AI safety researcher development programmes (e.g., LASR, MATS, ARENA, PIBBSS, Pivotal), and many individual researchers (independent and externally affiliated). LISA’s centre also facilitates hackathons, workshops, seminars, discussion groups, lightning talks, and other events to support collaboration and engagement on key ideas in AI safety.

Introduction

London stands out as an ideal location for a dedicated AI safety research centre:

• Frontier Labs: It is the only city outside of the Bay Area with offices from all major AI labs (e.g., Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Antropic, Meta)
• Concentrated and underutilised talent (e.g., researchers & software engineers), many of whom are keen to contribute to AI safety but are reluctant or unable to relocate to the Bay Area due to visas, partners, family, culture, etc.
• UK Government connections: The UK government has clearly signalled their concern for the importance of AI safety by hosting the first AI safety summit, establishing the UK AI safety institute, AISI, and introducing favourable immigration requirements for researchers. Moreover, policy-makers and researchers are all within 30 mins of one another.
• Easy transport links: LISA is ideally located to act as a short-term base for visiting AI safety researchers from the US, Europe, and other parts of the UK who want to visit researchers (and policy-makers) in companies, universities, and governments in and around London, as well as those in Europe.
• Regular cohorts of MATS, PIBBSS, ARENA, and LASR Labs (both scholars and mentors) because of the above (in particular, the favourable immigration requirements compared with the US).

Despite this favourable setting, so far little community infrastructure investment has been made. Therefore, LISA’s mission is to accommodate professional AI safety projects in London so that they have the resources, community, and support to positively impact the development and deployment of advanced AI systems.

To achieve this, LISA will:

• Provide a research environment that is supportive, productive, and collaborative, where a diversity of ideas can be refined, challenged, and advanced;
• Offer financial stability, collective recognition, and accountability to individual researchers and new small organisations;
• Cultivate a london home for professional AI safety research by leveraging London's strategic advantages and building upon our existing ecosystem and partnerships;
• Foster epistemic quality and diversity amongst new AI safety researchers and organisations by facilitating mentorship & upskilling programmes and encouraging exploration of numerous AI safety research agendas.

LISA stands in a unique position to enact this vision. In September 2023, we founded our research centre which now contains many individual researchers (with numerous affiliations), small organisations (e.g., Apollo Research, Leap Labs, BlueDot Impact), and various AI Safety researcher development programmes (e.g., LASR, MATS extension, ARENA, PIBBSS), we are poised to capitalise on the strategic advantages offered by the abundance of motivated and competent talent in London and the supportive frameworks provided by the UK government and local organisations.  Our approach is not just about creating a space for research; it is about building a community and a movement that can significantly improve the safety of advanced AI systems.

The urgency