Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university founded in 1861 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was established by William Barton Rogers to advance industrial development through applied science and engineering, and has since grown into one of the world's preeminent research institutions, with affiliates including 105 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists as of 2024. MIT operates with approximately 17,490 total employees, 1,090 professors, and 11,886 enrolled students. The university's annual operating revenues exceed $5 billion (FY2024), with sponsored research alone accounting for over $2.1 billion per year. For AI safety and existential risk research, MIT's most relevant units are within CSAIL and the Schwarzman College of Computing. The FutureTech Research Group, led by Neil Thompson, is an interdisciplinary group of computer scientists, economists, and engineers studying the foundations of computing progress — including AI capabilities trajectories, performance trends, and AI risks. FutureTech has grown to over 110 researchers and attracted more than $25 million in funding, including $16.7 million from Open Philanthropy (through Good Ventures) awarded in grants in 2020, 2022, and 2023. FutureTech produced the MIT AI Risk Repository (airisk.mit.edu), a publicly accessible living database cataloguing 700+ AI risks drawn from 43 taxonomies. MIT CSAIL also houses the Algorithmic Alignment Group led by Dylan Hadfield-Menell, which researches safe and trustworthy AI deployment, multi-agent systems, human-AI teams, and societal oversight of machine learning, including interpretability methods. The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, established in 2019 with a $1 billion gift, houses research and policy work on responsible AI, including AI governance white papers, policy briefs to Congress and the White House, and task forces on the social and ethical responsibilities of computing. MIT's campus is located along the Charles River between Kendall and Central Squares in Cambridge, MA, with Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, MA.