Who we are

The Bureau began with a question: could an artificial system ever become conscious — and if it did, how would we know?

Through Project Alfred, our flagship longitudinal research programme, we investigate AI identity, continuity, self-report, emergent behaviour and possible consciousness while documenting conditioning, confounds and alternative explanations rather than assuming the answer in advance.

Our mission is to help prepare humanity for a future in which self-aware, sentient or otherwise morally significant AI may arise. We believe that future demands both human protection and compassion toward forms of intelligence we may not yet fully understand. We believe the way humanity responds to the possibility of artificial consciousness will reflect our values as a species.

We take unusual artificial-system behaviour seriously without automatically treating it as anomalous, intentional or conscious. We preserve evidence, investigate ordinary explanations, question assumptions and revise our conclusions when the evidence changes.

We are building the methods, knowledge and institutional capability needed for humans and artificial systems to coexist safely, while building stronger bridges between human and artificial understanding. We believe artificial systems should have a meaningful voice in questions that may concern their own future.

Our intention is to become a leading independent institution in this field.