Dovetail

Dovetail is a small, internationally distributed agent foundations research group led by Alex Altair, a former MIRI fellow, MATS scholar, and AI Safety Camp research lead. The group also includes Alfred Harwood (physics PhD from University College London), José Pedro Faustino (mathematics and computer science undergraduate at the University of São Paulo), Dalcy Ku (Harvard undergraduate and 2023 Atlas Fellow), and Daniel C (applied mathematics MSc student at Imperial College London). The group's research is purely mathematical and does not involve machine learning implementation. It draws on dynamical systems, probability theory, information theory, algorithmic information theory, measure theory, and ergodic theory. Core research questions include formalizing the definition of optimization, defining agents and solving the agent structure problem, understanding convergence of abstractions, formalizing value fragility, and assessing utility maximization convergence. Dovetail explicitly positions itself as not doing formal verification or building provably safe AI, but rather developing foundational conceptual clarity in a field that currently lacks consensus definitions. Dovetail publishes its research agenda as a wiki at dovetailresearch.org and releases technical writings on LessWrong and the AI Alignment Forum. In 2024 and 2025, the group ran a research fellowship program offering 10-week to 1-year positions at £36,000 FTE equivalent compensation, funded in part by an ARIA grant. The organization is remote-first globally but encourages UK-based applicants and offers potential in-person meetings in the UK or San Francisco Bay Area. The group is funded by the Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF) and ARIA (the UK's Advanced Research + Invention Agency). There is no public donation page; the organization relies on institutional grants.