Deadline: July 28, 2026
Applications are open for the Pathfinder Fellowship 2026. Pathfinder is a selective fellowship for students organizing technical AI safety or AI policy university groups around the world. They provide mentorship, funding, and other resources to help fellows develop into on-campus leaders, preparing themselves and their group members for careers in the field.
The Pathfinder Fellowship is run by Kairos, a nonprofit whose mission is to help society navigate the transition to transformative AI.
Benefits
- Funding: Pathfinder organizers can apply for funding to support their group’s activities, including everything from compute to speaker events to pizza. Graduate students can also apply for a stipend to support their time spent on the group.
- Mentorship: They pair accepted fellows with experienced organizers who will support your planning, share tried-and-tested advice and work closely with you on your specific goals and challenges.
- Community: The workshops, Slack community, and virtual coffee chats provide opportunities to connect with other fellows and share resources, ideas, support, and inspiration.
- Career support: Many of the mentors have worked at top AI safety orgs like METR, RAND, and Anthropic. They’re here to offer you advice and help you navigate your own successful future in the field. Recent Pathfinder participants have landed AI safety roles at orgs like Coefficient Giving, Constellation, UK AISI, and Redwood Research, and gone on to MATS, Astra, Generator, Horizon, and other top fellowships.
- Resources: Pathfinder hosts workshops on important field-building skills like doing outreach on campus, involving graduate students, and facilitating in-person courses. They also share access to the AI Safety Groups Resource Center, which contains dozens of articles on how to build and manage an AIS university group.
- Impact: Organizing is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for the field, and for your own trajectory. Pathfinder helps you help students at your university learn and upskill, so they can help the world safely navigate the arrival of transformative AI.
Eligibility
Pathfinder fellows must:
- Help lead or plan to found a university AI safety group, whether graduate or undergraduate.
- Have a strong interest in AI safety and enough knowledge of the field to explain core AI risk concerns to a beginner.
Fellows can be based anywhere in the world. If you meet these criteria, you are encouraged to submit an application. Top applicants will be admitted to the fellowship.
Application
For more information, visit Pathfinder Fellowship.
