AI Security Institute
| Formation | November 2023 |
|---|---|
| Services | AI safety research |
Parent organization | Department of Science, Innovation and Technology |
| Website | www |
The AI Security Institute (AISI) is a research organisation under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology of the United Kingdom that aims "to equip governments with a scientific understanding of the risks posed by advanced AI".[1] It conducts research and develop and test mitigations. Previously, it was known as the AI Safety Institute.[2] Its creation followed world's first major AI Safety Summit that was held in Bletchley Park in 2023.[3] The institute's professed goal is "building the world's leading understanding of advanced AI risks and solutions, to inform governments so they can keep the public safe". It is designed like a startup in the government "combining the authority of government with the expertise and agility of the private sector".[4]
AISI has made access agreements with Anthropic, Google and OpenAI to test their models before release.[3] It has an open source platform called Inspect that permits companies, governments and academics to run standardised safety tests for AI usage.[3] Among the works AISI has done is the reported detection of multiple serious vulnerabilities that could enable development of biological weapons; the vulnerabilities were fixed before the model was launched.[3]
It conducts research on diverse fields of AI application. One study by AISI found that LLMs post-trained for political persuasiveness became systematically less accurate and up to 51% more persuasive on political issues.[5] AISI has also worked on the usage of AI for emotional needs. It found that nearly 10 percent of UK citizens used systems like chatbots for emotional purposes on a weekly basis.[6] It found that "systems are now outperforming PhD-level researchers on scientific knowledge tests and helping non-experts succeed at lab work that would previously have been out of reach" in a report published in December 2025.[7]
Former chief AI officer of GCHQ Adam Beaumont is the institution's interim director. UK prime minister's AI advisor Jade Leung is the chief technology officer.[4]
See also
- Alan Turing Institute, UK institute for data science and AI
- Artificial intelligence safety institute
References
- ^ "AISI". Government of UK. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
- ^ "Written statements - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament". questions-statements.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2026-03-23.
- ^ a b c d "Britain is the closest the world has to an AI safety inspector". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2026-02-20.
- ^ a b "Equipping governments with a scientific understanding of the risks posed by advanced AI". AI Security Institute.
- ^ "The levers of political persuasion with conversational artificial intelligence". Science. 2025-12-04.
- ^ Milmo, Dan (18 December 2025). "Third of UK citizens have used AI for emotional support, research reveals". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2026-02-20.
- ^ AISI. Frontier AI Trends Report. December 2025. retrieved on 20 February 2026