Introductory Fellowship

Learn. Discuss. Reflect. Shape the Future of AI.

Begin your journey into AI Safety and help shape technology that truly benefits humanity.

Why join the fellowship?

AI is transforming every aspect of society, from healthcare to governance. Ensuring these systems act safely and align with human values remains one of the most important challenges of our time.

This 10-week Introductory Fellowship program helps you understand the key problems, approaches, and open questions in AI Safety and gives you the chance to engage in lively, in-person discussions with an interdisciplinary community of peers.

    • May 2nd: Application Deadline

    • May 3rd: Application Decisions send out

    • May 7th: Fellowship Kick-Off

  • No prior technical experience is required. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds who share a curiosity about one central question: How can we make AI beneficial to humanity?

    Note that this program is offered both in-person and online. Depending on capacity and location, you may be placed in either an in-person or an online group. You do not have to be a student at Saarland University.

    Applications from non-CS backgrounds and underrepresented groups such as woman are highly encouraged!

  • The fellowship is designed to build strong foundations in AI Safety through consistent engagement. We therefore expect fellows to commit around 4 hours per week:

    • 2 hours attending the in-person reading and discussion session in Saarbrücken

    • 1 - 2 hours for independent reading and reflection on the weekly materials

    • Cohorts will meet weekly. We aim to choose a schedule that accommodates as many participants as possible

    You may miss a maximum of two sessions over the 10-week period.

What we offer you:

  • Building your understanding of AI progress, risks, and safety challenges can feel overwhelming at first. Our fellowship provides a guided and structured way to build these foundations.

    In weekly in-person sessions, you will explore key ideas from the AI Safety Atlas through discussion, activities, and reflection. Each week focuses on one chapter, covering topics such as alignment, goal misgeneralization, oversight, and governance.

    You’ll leave with a clear picture of the landscape of AI Safety, the main problem areas, promising research directions, and practical pathways for contribution.

  • The Introductory Fellowship is more than a course, it’s your entry point into the AI Safety Saarland community. You’ll meet like-minded peers who share your curiosity and commitment to responsible AI. Beyond the sessions, we encourage you to join community socials and other public events.

    By the end of the program, you’ll have not only a strong foundation in AI Safety, but also a network of people supporting your continued growth, whether you go on to join our Advanced Fellowship, start your own project, or contribute to AI Safety initiatives worldwide.

More questions? Check out our FAQ’s.

Fellowship Schedule 2025-26

  • Introduction

    Week 1 | May 14

    This session gives you the overview of what “AI safety” means, why it matters, what kinds of failures or undesirable outcomes we’re worried about, and how this field fits into both technical and societal contexts.

  • Capabilities

    Week 2 | May 18 – 22

    Here you explore how AI systems become more capable and what kinds of capabilities matter for safety. It covers ideas like “how good are current systems?”, “what might future systems be able to do?”, and how capabilities growth drives safety research.

  • Risks

    Week 3 | May 25 - 29

    This chapter looks at the different ways AI systems can cause harm from misuse, misalignment, emergent behaviors, to systemic effects. It further introduces you to scenarios, likelihoods and categories of risk to help you understand what you’re trying to prevent.

  • Strategies

    Week 4 | Jun 1 - 5

    Having explored the risks, this chapter surveys how we might respond: technical safety methods, institution or governance-level strategies, coordination and alignment agendas. It connects risk to possible mitigation pathways.

  • Governance

    Week 5 | Jun 8 - 12

    Focuses on how societies, organizations and regulatory regimes can shape the safe development, deployment and oversight of AI. It examines policy, regulation, norms, incentives and how governance interactions impact safety.

  • Evaluations

    Week 6 | Jun 15 - 19

    This chapter explores how we test, measure and monitor AI systems’ safety i.e., how do we know if a system is “safe enough” or at what point scaling becomes riskier. Topics include benchmarks, evaluation design, behavioral tests etc.

  • Misspecification

    Week 7 | Jun 22 - 26

    This deals with the problem of AI systems learning or pursuing the wrong objectives because the specification (goal, reward, constraint) is imperfect. It examines how even a well-intentioned system can go astray if its “goal” is mis-specified or incomplete.

  • Goal Misgeneralization

    Week 8 | Jun 29 - Jul 3

    This picks up from misspecification and considers how an AI may correctly optimize for a goal in one context but generalize incorrectly in new contexts.

  • Scalable Oversight

    Week 9 | Jul 6 - 10

    This chapter explores how humans can supervise and align increasingly capable AI systems through scalable feedback, AI-assisted evaluation, and recursive oversight methods.

  • Interpretability

    Week 10 | Jul 13 – 17

    The last chapter focuses on making AI systems’ internal processes more transparent, understandable and auditable so that we can foresee, detect or prevent undesirable behaviors. Techniques, trade-offs and the role of interpretability for alignment and oversight are discussed.

FAQs

  • No, while beneficial, we do not expect you to have prior knowledge. Our foundations sessions will provide you with that. However, we expect you to have a genuine interest in making AI safe and beneficial for everyone.

  • This is a 10-week program with one 2-hour in-person discussion each week in Saarbrücken. Each session covers a new topic from the AI Safety Atlas. You’ll also have 1-2 hours of optional reading or reflection between meetings.

  • No, we are an independent organisation aiming to provide a pipeline for people into impactful AI safety or governance work.

    However, you will get a certificate from our side upon successful completion of the program.

  • Regular attendance is expected but you may miss up to two sessions during the 10-week program and still receive a certificate of participation. Since each session builds on the previous one, we strongly encourage consistent engagement to get the full benefit of the fellowship.

  • While both programs do not assume prior AI safety or governance experience, the research incubator is our more intense flagship program giving you access to a highly skilled research mentor, career advice and exclusive community support.

  • Send us an email at info@ais-saarland.org and we will get back to you as quick as possible!