29.05.2026

Diversity in AI Safety Research

Ibrahim Habli, Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe AI Systems (SAINTS), explains why a diverse research community is essential for safe AI.

In AI safety, we talk a lot about whether a system is ‘acceptably safe’. That phrase is deliberate. Safety is never absolute, and so we’re always making a judgement and projecting our own assumptions about what ‘acceptable’ looks like. That raises an uncomfortable question: acceptable to whom, and under what circumstances? It’s that tension that sits at the heart of what we are trying to do at SAINTS. And it is why, for us, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is not a box-ticking exercise. It is a research imperative.