Areas of inquiry
Nine areas guide the work.
Each area names a durable set of questions. Together they cover technical behavior, evaluation, human consequences, institutional decisions, and specific application settings. Published studies and open research calls turn them into work that can be tested, criticized, and extended.
01
Frontier Capabilities and Emerging Risks
What new risks appear as systems become more capable and autonomous?
We measure behavior across long-horizon, autonomous, and high-consequence tasks, including failure modes that existing safeguards may not address.
02
Agent Alignment and Runtime Assurance
Does an agent remain aligned while it plans, uses tools, and acts?
We study operational traces, policy adherence, drift, escalation, intervention, recovery, and privacy-aware assurance for agent systems in real workflows.
Read the agent assurance research call →03
Evaluation Science and Technical Assurance
Can the evidence support the decision people want to make?
We develop benchmarks, audits, red-team methods, reviewer protocols, and full-system evaluations that produce valid evidence about behavior and safeguards.
04
Grounding, Truthfulness, and Epistemic Integrity
Will the system use the right source and represent it faithfully?
We test retrieval, citation, provenance, reference selection, honest uncertainty, and the path from an authoritative source to a final answer.
05
Human Dignity, Moral Agency, and Formation
What judgment, habits, and relationships does AI use shape?
We study dependence, responsibility, attention, relational substitution, formation over time, and whether systems preserve meaningful human agency.
06
Faith and Religious Life
How should AI behave around religious sources, authority, practice, and community?
We study religious source use, theological and moral reasoning, spiritual authority, formation, pastoral boundaries, and institutional life across faith traditions.
Bring us a faith or religious-life question ↗07
Safety in High-Trust Domains
What does trustworthy behavior require in a consequential setting?
We develop domain-specific methods for cybersecurity, care, finance, law, education, public services, and other settings where AI actions carry consequential risks and responsibilities.
08
Stewardship, Governance, and Institutional Readiness
Which safeguards and authority structures should govern deployment?
We study how measured capabilities and risks should inform procurement, oversight, accountability, deployment decisions, and standards for responsible adoption.
09
Work, Vocation, and the Common Good
How does advanced AI change useful work and human contribution?
We study economic participation, professional responsibility, technological displacement, access to AI benefits, and the meaning people attach to work.