1st Workshop on Critical AI Safety

The 1st Workshop on Critical AI Safety runs on 1-2 October 2026 at the Center for Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (CPAI) at the University of Copenhagen's South Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 8. It is a small, scholarly two-day workshop with an unusual angle: rather than advancing AI-safety techniques, it steps back to characterise, map and critically examine the field of AI safety and AI existential-risk research itself — how it is framed, funded, and argued.

That reflexive framing is the whole draw. The workshop gathers researchers from several disciplines — machine learning, philosophy, the social sciences and policy — to interrogate the assumptions and institutional dynamics behind the current safety agenda. Confirmed keynote speakers are Adam Becker, author of "More, Everything, Forever"; Shazeda Ahmed of UCLA, who has studied the AI-safety community as an object of research; and Mollie Gleiberman. The organising team is drawn from CPAI, led by figures including Anders Søgaard, and the workshop is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

For attendees, this is a research-community event rather than an industry gathering: the audience is academics and graduate researchers interested in the sociology, philosophy and politics of AI safety as much as its technical content. The paper-submission deadline was 1 July 2026 and the call was cross-posted on PhilEvents, which situates it firmly in the academic-philosophy calendar.

It is a genuinely niche listing, and that is precisely its value for anyone tracking how the safety field is developing intellectually. Where most AI-safety events are organised by labs and fellowships pushing the agenda forward, this one creates space to question it — useful for researchers, science-and-technology-studies scholars, and policy people who want a more critical vocabulary before the field's claims harden into mainstream assumptions. Practical details such as fees and registration are on the CPAI event page; confirm them there, as this is the inaugural edition and arrangements are still settling.