The AI Alignment Landscape
This report maps the current AI alignment landscape. It features 208 initiatives working on AI alignment and the broader implications of artificial intelligence for society: safety teams inside frontier labs, independent research groups, governmental and academic institutes, fellowships, startups, and other organisations and programmes. It also lists 20 funders behind much of this work. These initiatives exhibit a wide spectrum of approaches both technical and non-technical. Many draw upon disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, such as philosophy, psychology, law, economics, democratic theory, faith and the arts.
Each initiative is judged on two scales. Its ‘focus’ is the aspect of the alignment problem that it prioritises, from inside the model itself outwards to society and governance. Its ‘method’ is how technical its means are, from pure engineering to work with no technical component. The figures that follow use these scales to illustrate the diversity of the AI alignment landscape and highlight approaches that might currently be under-explored.
Every graphical element can be hovered or pressed to show the initiatives it stands for, with descriptions and links for each.
1.Defining focus and method
Focus and method are judgements made from each initiative's stated public work in October 2026. Borderline cases could reasonably sit one step either way. The five focuses are shaded from light to dark, and the same shading marks every initiative in the figures that follow.
The five focuses
The five methods
2.Initiatives by focus and method
Figure 1. Focus and method.
3.Initiatives by type
Each initiative is categorised as one of eleven types based on the role it plays in the field. Where an initiative does several things, its type is defined by its main activity today. Funders are associated with the focus and method of the work they principally fund. Those that purely give grants appear only in the figures by type and in the index.
Figure 2. Focus by type.
Figure 3. Method by type.
4.Disciplines
Figure 4. Disciplines by focus.
5.Chronology
Figure 5. Initiatives by the year they began.
Figure 6. Focus over time.
Figure 7. When each type of initiative began.
6.Geography
Figure 8. The world.
Figure 9. Focus and method by place.
Figure 10. The Bay Area.
Figure 11. The US north east.
Figure 12. The United Kingdom.
7.Index of initiatives
All 227 initiatives and funders, and Termite, with their full names, in alphabetical order. Filter by focus, method, type, discipline or place, or search by name, city or description.
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