Research | Certes Institute

Research Areas

Certes exists to accelerate Australia's contribution to AI safety research and the understanding and mitigation of catastrophic and existential risks. We support researchers across three interconnected areas.

AI Safety and Alignment

Certes provides institutional infrastructure for researchers working on technical AI alignment, interpretability, and the governance interfaces between technical research and policy. While a small number of Australian charities provide fiscal sponsorship or community spaces for AI safety work, none currently offer the combined package of grant housing, researcher employment, residential programs, and operational support that dedicated research infrastructure requires. Certes is built to fill that gap.

Superalignment and Long-Horizon Safety

Some of the most important alignment work has no guaranteed near-term payoff. Research into aligning systems substantially more capable than current models requires sustained focus, tolerance for uncertainty, and freedom from publication-pressure distortions. Certes provides the institutional stability for researchers to pursue this work on the timescales it demands, rather than the timescales that funding cycles or academic tenure impose.

Civilisational Robustness

AI development approaching transformative capability levels may disrupt large sections of the economy and institutional fabric. Understanding resilience across catastrophic and existential risk cause areas — food systems, infrastructure, governance continuity — is part of the overall research portfolio. This connects directly to ongoing work on food resilience and community disaster preparedness in southern Tasmania.

Our Approach

Certes is infrastructure, not a research methodology. The researchers we support bring their own expertise and approaches. Our role is to provide the operational conditions under which their work can succeed.

Long-horizon research matters — even without guaranteed near-term results. We fund and house researchers whose work may take years to bear fruit, because the alternative is that no one does this work at all.
Freedom from institutional constraints — researchers need room to pursue directions that universities and corporate labs may not support. No publish-or-perish incentives, no IP encumbrances beyond what charitable purposes require.
Physical environment matters — deep research benefits from sustained, in-person collaboration in an environment designed for focus. Tasmania offers affordable operations, low distraction, and a natural setting conducive to extended concentration.
No single methodology is sufficient — we are cautious about treating any single approach to safety research as adequate on its own, and prioritise researchers pursuing complementary and sometimes orthogonal strategies.

Research Environment

Our long-term vision is a permanent research facility set in productive agricultural land, integrating permaculture, community disaster-preparedness ties, and world-class accommodation for visiting researchers.

The reasoning is concrete: researchers studying catastrophic and existential risk benefit from being embedded in a community that models the civilisational robustness they study. A facility with local food production, strong ties to regional emergency preparedness networks, and practical experience in resilient systems design makes the abstract tangible — and makes it possible to test ideas against reality rather than theory alone.

Tasmania is well-suited to this model. The state offers affordable land and operations, a productive growing climate, established community networks, state government interest in attracting research talent, and an environment that world-tier researchers find genuinely attractive. The relative isolation enables the focused, residential mode of work that deep alignment research benefits from.

2026 Roadmap

Establishment timeline and research milestones

Q1 2026 — Establishment

Board appointed ✓
Charitable registration in progress
Outreach to strategic partners across Australian AI safety ecosystem
Funding conversations with Australian philanthropists

Q2 2026 — First Operations

Grant housing agreements with first partners
First researcher cohort identified and onboarded
Research retreat in Tasmania (contingent on funding)
Initial consultant deployments to government and allied bodies

H2 2026 — Growth

Training partnerships formalised
Government consultations deepened
Research environment planning advanced
Permanent hosting capacity progress

All timelines subject to funding outcomes and regulatory dependencies. See our Transparency page for current status.

How We Support Research

What we provide is the operational environment that lets researchers do their best work:

Grant administration and financial management without university overhead
Flexible, legible employment without classical academic restraints and incentives
Publication under the Certes name, building institutional credibility
Residential research programs in Tasmania for focused collaboration
Logistical support for workshops, training programs, and government engagements

All research published through Certes will be as open as we can make it, and open access by default. Some projects and engagements will be confidential in nature. Noting this, we are committed to transparency in our operations and welcome scrutiny of our work and governance.