The Mathematical AI Safety Institute wants to prove AI is safe the way cryptographers prove codes are unbreakable

Canadian mathematician Jacob Tsimerman, a fresh Fields Medal recipient, has announced the founding of the Mathematical A.I. Safety Institute (MAISI). The independent research institute in the San Francisco Bay Area plans to start work in January 2027 with ten to thirty mathematicians tackling AI safety problems, the New York Times reports. Tsimerman, who is also joining OpenAI's safety team, says the field needs "a much, much higher level of safety standard than we’re currently getting."

With an encryption scheme, you can prove it's unbreakable without trying every possible attack. AI has no such shortcut. Safety only shows up in practice, and according to MAISI, there isn't even a clear definition of what "safe" means, not even in theory.

That's the kind of proof MAISI wants to make possible. The goal is to show that a system acts responsibly and produces correct results, that multiple AI agents working together don't trigger unwanted outcomes, and that systems can withstand vulnerabilities nobody has found yet. One tool could be zero-knowledge proofs, which let a system demonstrate it isn't cheating without exposing the trade secrets of AI labs.