AI Safety Sandbox
Search

AI policy

Laws, institutions and public debate about AI.

Overview

AI policy covers the rules governments make about AI, such as the EU AI Act, national AI safety institutes, public-sector use of algorithms and liability for harm. It also covers wider effects on jobs, elections and the balance of power.

Most starter projects need public documents, a spreadsheet and careful reading.

Regulation and lawAI incidents and accountabilityPublic-sector AIEconomy and societyCommunication and public opinion

Guided projects 7

Short projects with numbered steps.

Policy1–3 hoursGuided

Map the AI rules where you live

Find out which laws, strategies and guidance apply to AI in your country, and fit them onto one page.

Reading & writingDataView project
Policy1–3 hoursGuided

Explain the EU AI Act’s risk levels

Summarise how the EU sorts AI systems by risk (banned, high-risk, transparency duties, minimal) with one everyday example for each level, plus what changes for general-purpose models.

Reading & writingVisualView project
Policy1–3 hoursGuided

Investigate a real AI incident

Pick one case from the AI Incident Database and write it up like an accident investigator: what happened, who was harmed, why, and what rule or practice would have prevented it.

Reading & writingView project
PolicyA weekendGuided

Sort 20 AI news stories with the MIT AI Risk Repository

The MIT AI Risk Repository organises over a thousand AI risks into a shared taxonomy. Use it to classify 20 recent news stories, then look at what the pattern tells you.

DataReading & writingView project
PolicyA weekendGuided

Check how the UK government discloses its algorithms

UK public bodies publish records about the algorithmic tools they use under the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard. Read five records and assess what is disclosed and what is missing.

Reading & writingDataView project
PolicyA weekendGuided

Run an AI policy tabletop exercise

Gather 6–12 friends, give each a stakeholder role (lab, regulator, journalist, public) and play out how society responds to a fictional AI incident.

PeopleReading & writingView project

Project ideas 11

PolicyA weekendIntermediate

Write a two-page policy memo on one AI risk

Pick one decision-maker, one AI risk and one decision they actually face. Lay out the options and make a clear recommendation in two pages.

Reading & writingView project
PolicyA few weeksIntermediate

Track AI transparency laws across countries

Which countries require AI developers to disclose safety testing, incidents or training details? Build a comparative tracker of transparency and disclosure rules.

DataReading & writingView project
PolicyA few weeksIntermediate

Compare whistleblower protections for AI workers

If an employee at an AI company sees something dangerous, what protects them if they speak up? Compare protections across two or three jurisdictions.

Reading & writingView project
PolicyA few weeksIntermediate

How exposed are jobs in your region to AI?

Combine public data on how AI is being used for different tasks with local labour-market statistics to estimate which jobs in your region are most exposed.

DataView project
PolicyA few weeksStarter

Track where your politicians stand on AI

Build a nonpartisan tracker of your representatives’ public statements on AI: everyday harms, geopolitics and catastrophic risks.

DataReading & writingView project
PolicyA few weeksIntermediate

Early warning signs of gradual disempowerment

Kulveit et al. argue AI could slowly erode human influence over the economy, culture and the state. Propose three measurable indicators for each domain using public data, and say which would warn us earliest.

DataReading & writingView project
PolicyA few weeksIntermediate

Build an AI tool that helps people make better decisions

AI could make institutions better or worse at reasoning and coordinating. Prototype one tool or evaluation from BlueDot’s decision-making hackathon or Forethought’s design sketches.

CodeVisualView project

Also relevant 25

Projects from other themes, and general projects that work in any theme.

Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided

Explain DNA synthesis screening in one page

Companies make synthetic DNA to order. Screening those orders and the customers who place them is one of the main defences against engineered pandemics. Explain how it works and where the gaps are.

Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediateMay be taken

Build a customer-screening training dataset

Expand a handful of existing case studies into 25–40 profiles of legitimate and concerning customers, including historical cases of people who ordered dangerous biological material.

Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediatePartly covered

Map how suspicious biological orders get reported across countries

Compare how countries handle biosecurity suspicious-activity reports (reporting chains, data storage, privacy, jurisdiction gaps) against the financial sector’s anti-money-laundering systems.

Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate

Estimate what a city needs in a pandemic

How many critical workers would a city need to protect? How much indoor space is there? What data would a government want on day one of a crisis?

DataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate

Is AI actually speeding up drug discovery?

Where is AI actually speeding up work on medical countermeasures, and where are regulation, trials or manufacturing the main bottleneck?

Reading & writingDataView project

All 43 related projects

Mentored research 20

Policy7 h/weekMentored

How AI Safety Looks to the People Around Us (opens in a new tab)

Interview people working in AI safety and people in their lives who aren't immersed in the field to understand how AI safety work affects relationships, how career choices and beliefs are perceived, and what helps people communicate across differences in worldview.

Vy Tran · Generator Residency

GeneralistCommunicationsSocietal impacts

Starter project: Make one piece of AI safety content or Map the AI rules where you live

Policy10 h/weekMentored

From AI Exposure to Economic Shock: Early-Warning Triggers for Southeast Asia (opens in a new tab)

Most AI labour research stops at estimating which jobs are exposed; this project asks when AI-driven disruption in Southeast Asia’s export-service economies could cascade into a broader economic and governance shock—and what governments can do before it does. Mentees will build and stress-test early-warning indicators, transition scenarios and policy triggers for anticipatory action.

Supheakmungkol Sarin, Taiye Chen · AI Safety Asia / Independent Researcher

Societal impactsEconomics of AIAI strategy

Starter project: Run an AI policy tabletop exercise or Map the AI rules where you live

Policy5 h/weekMentored

AI for epistemics: decision-making evals, deployment research and cause prioritisation (opens in a new tab)

AI is shaping how people and institutions decide, but we can barely measure whether it makes decisions better, the tools that would help struggle to get adopted, and what matters most in this space. This project works across three workstreams: building decision-making benchmarks for models, researching how to most effectively improve decision making with AI, and producing a cause prioritisation for the field.

Alexander Mohar Csaky · Independent

Societal impactsBehavioral evaluation of LLMsAI strategy

Starter project: Build your first mini-eval or Make one piece of AI safety content

Policy7 h/weekMentored

AI and the First Amendment: A Doctrinal Taxonomy (opens in a new tab)

This project builds a comprehensive, interactive public resource mapping every intersection between artificial intelligence and First Amendment doctrine across all six clauses and their implied rights. Mentees will research existing precedent, identify novel legal questions, and produce in-depth analyses that serve as both a reference taxonomy and a foundation for future publications in tech policy outlets and law reviews.

Michael Endrias · Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS)

US policySocietal impactsAI strategy

Starter project: Sort 20 AI news stories with the MIT AI Risk Repository or Map the AI rules where you live

Policy5 h/weekMentored

[Jurisdiction-specific] Public-Sector AI Resilience Agenda (opens in a new tab)

Most jurisdictions still concentrate handling of "AI" as a topic in a few government units, but TAI will have impacts for the work of every part of every government. We should develop agendas for whole-of-government TAI preparedness, both generically and specific to high-priority countries.

Chris Schmitz · Centre for Digital Governance, Hertie School

National policyAI strategySocietal impacts

Starter project: Check how the UK government discloses its algorithms or Map the AI rules where you live

All 20 mentored policy projects

Courses and introductions

More project ideas

Organisations

Programmes and fellowships

All programmes on AISafety.com (opens in a new tab)