AI Safety Institute establishment

Question

The UK AI Security Institute is funded at approximately 66M per year. Where does Australia sit in a comparative resourcing assessment against the UK, US, Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Canada? Both by currency exchange rate and per capita. The government response to the Senate Select Committee on Adopting AI states $7.9 million per year ongoing from 2029-2030. What is the indexation methodology? Is this new money or reallocation within DISR? AISI was announced as operational in ''early 2026''. We note the announcement that the inaugural general manager was appointed last Friday. Would you consider it operational today? Has the Head of AI Safety Research and Testing been appointed? Who, when, at what classification? What was the recruitment pool? How many internal vs external candidates? Were the positions advertised internationally? How many AISI staff (FTE) have: (a) prior employment at the UK AISI, US CAIAI, Canadian AISI, or another national AI safety institute (b) prior employment in the safety, alignment, or evaluations teams at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Deepmind, xAI or Meta?

Answer

See attached response.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• BI-014_Shoebridge_AI Safety Institute establishment_DISR.pdf (opens in a new tab)