Bringing together international partners, tech companies and civil society, the UK will spearhead pioneering new work which will help make sure AI systems behave predictably and as designed – supporting the UK government's Plan for Change by enabling the unlocking of the full benefits of AI while providing strong national security foundations.

AI Alignment is a crucial field in AI research - focused on making sure the technology always acts in our interests and rooting out harmful behaviours which could pose a risk to society.

Backed by over £15 million, the fund announced at the end of July, will help unlock the benefits of advanced AI while keeping people safe – further cementing the UK’s position as a world leader in AI and expanding the global effort to tackle alignment.

Led by the UK’s AI Security Institute, the Alignment Project is backed by an international coalition including the Canadian AI Safety Institute, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Schmidt Sciences, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Anthropic, Halcyon Futures, the Safe AI Fund, UK Research and Innovation, and the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

One of the most urgent technical challenges of our time

This reflects a growing global consensus - across government, industry, academia and philanthropy - that alignment is one of the most urgent technical challenges of our time, and that expanding the field is a shared international responsibility.

The project will fund cutting-edge research into AI alignment - including ways to make sure AI systems continue to follow goals as the technology becomes more capable and finding techniques to ensure AI systems remain transparent and responsive to human oversight.

AI continues to develop at breakneck speed, with the 2025 International AI Safety Report highlighting how advanced models are rapidly improving their capabilities and demonstrating PhD-levels of knowledge in some areas. Today’s methods for controlling AI are likely to be insufficient for tomorrow’s more capable systems as the technology continues to develop, with the need for co-ordinated global action to ensure the long-term safety of citizens more pressing than ever.

Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: "Advanced AI systems are already exceeding human performance in some areas, so it’s crucial we’re driving forward research to ensure this transformative technology is behaving in our interests.

AI alignment is all geared towards making systems behave as we want them to, so they are always acting in our best interests. This is at the heart of the work the Institute has been leading since day one – safeguarding our national security and ensuring the British public are protected from the most serious risks AI could pose as the technology becomes more and more advanced.

The responsible development of AI needs a co-ordinated global approach, and this fund will help us make AI more reliable, more trustworthy, and more capable of delivering the growth, better public services, and high-skilled jobs."

The Alignment Project

The Alignment Project, guided by a world-class expert advisory board, including Yoshua Bengio, Zico Kolter, Shafi Goldwasser, and Andrea Lincoln, will remove key barriers that have previously limited alignment research by offering 3 distinct levels of support:

• Grant funding: up to £1 million for researchers across disciplines from computer sciences to cognitive science,

• Compute access: Up to £5 million dedicated cloud computing credits from AWS, enabling technical experiments beyond typical academic reach,

• Venture capital: Investment from private funders to accelerate commercial alignment solutions.

The Project combines funding, infrastructure, and market incentives to drive breakthrough progress.

Governments, philanthropists, and industry partners are now able to come forward to join The Alignment Project - contributing to its work through research grants, cloud compute resources, or venture funding for startups tackling alignment challenges. This coalition will accelerate progress, helping AI safety keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities.

Solving alignment removes one of the largest barriers to AI adoption - trust - and will maintain Britain’s competitive edge as a leader in AI as the technology is put to work to deliver the government’s Plan for Change.

Geoffrey Irving, Chief Scientist, AI Security Institute said: "AI alignment is one of the most urgent and under-resourced challenges of our time. Progress is essential, but it’s not happening fast enough relative to the rapid pace of AI development. Misaligned, highly capable systems could act in ways beyond our ability to control, with profound global implications.

The Alignment Project tackles this head-on by bringing together governments, industry, philanthropists, VC and researchers to close the critical gaps in alignment research. International coordination isn’t just valuable - it’s necessary. By providing funding, compute resources, and interdisciplinary collaboration to bring more ideas to bear on the problem, we hope to increase the chance that transformative AI systems serve humanity reliably, safely, and in ways we can trust."

John Davies, Managing Director UK, Germany and International Organisations Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services said: "We are delighted to support the UK AI Security Institute’s Alignment Project by providing access to the free cloud computing credits that will enable researchers to run control experiments and stress test the safety of AI models. This initiative will help ensure that companies, governments, academia, and researchers work together to deliver groundbreaking generative AI innovation with trust at the forefront."