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Principles of Intelligent Behavior in Biological and Social Systems (PIBBSS) was co-founded in late 2021 by Nora Ammann and Tushita (TJ) Jha, with the inaugural fellowship running in summer 2022. The organization was established on the premise that safe development of AI systems is not grounded in a mature science, and that a wide variety of natural and social systems exhibit properties similar to those found in AI -- adaptation, robustness, goal-directed behavior, learning, modularity, and phase transitions. By facilitating careful analogies with these complex systems, PIBBSS aims to transfer knowledge about intelligent behavior to the study of alignment and AGI.
The organization initially operated in the Czech Republic with fiscal sponsorship from Epistea, then relocated operations to London, and subsequently established a permanent US presence. It rebranded its umbrella entity to Principles of Intelligence (PrincInt), incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Minnesota (EIN 33-4129337), and now hosts both the PIBBSS Fellowship and the Iliad applied mathematics research group…
PIBBSS, now a project of Principles of Intelligence, aims to reduce risks from advanced AI by importing insights from disciplines that study intelligent behaviour in natural and social systems into AI safety research. It does this by supporting researchers through programs such as a summer fellowship, affiliate appointments and research residencies, giving them funding, mentorship and community to work on alignment, governance and risk projects grounded in these analogies. By helping talented academics transition into AI safety and produce substantial, legible research on intelligent behaviour across biological, social and artificial systems, PIBBSS/Principles of Intelligence intends to strengthen the scientific foundations of alignment and increase the likelihood that future AI systems are safe and beneficial.
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View on grantmaking.aiThe PIBBSS Fellowship is a flagship program of Principles of Intelligence (originally named PIBBSS · Principles of Intelligent Behavior in Biological and Social Systems), a nonprofit founded in 2022 by Nora Ammann, TJ, and Anna Gajdova. The fellowship was launched to address a talent and epistemic gap in AI safety: the field lacked sufficient engagement from researchers who study intelligence as it appears in natural and social systems. By recruiting PhD and postdoctoral researchers from disciplines such as computational neuroscience, complex systems, evolutionary biology, ecology, philosophy, linguistics, and political theory, the program attempts to bring new conceptual tools and research perspectives to bear on alignment problems…
The fellowship operates on the premise that AI safety requires foundational scientific advances that current technical AI safety research alone cannot provide. By recruiting researchers from fields that study complex and intelligent behavior in biological and social systems, PIBBSS aims to import conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and empirical findings from those fields into AI alignment. Each fellow works on a project bridging their home discipline and a specific alignment problem, mentored by experienced alignment researchers. Over time, fellows are expected to transition into full-time AI safety careers, expanding the field's talent base and diversifying its intellectual toolkit. The cumulative effect · more researchers, more interdisciplinary approaches, and more foundational scientific work · is intended to increase the likelihood of solving alignment before advanced AI systems pose catastrophic risks.
The PIBBSS Affiliate Program extends PIBBSS’s work beyond its summer fellowship by offering longer-term, highly tailored support to individual researchers whose work fits the “PIBBSS bet” on learning from intelligent behaviour in natural systems. Launched after the first fellowship cohorts, the program aims to counterfactually increase substantial and legible research progress on problems in AI risk, alignment and governance by giving promising researchers 6 · 12 months of full-time salary, integration into the PIBBSS research community and significant operational backing. Affiliates are supported to scope and refine their own research agendas, test novel or neglected research directions, publish insightful results, and either join existing research groups or found new ones, with success scenarios including maturing a research agenda enough to secure independent funding or institutional roles in AI alignment.
The Affiliate Program assumes that there are high-potential researchers who could make substantial contributions to AI risk, alignment and governance if given flexible, longer-term support to pursue their own agendas. By providing these researchers with 6 · 12 months of salary, integration into the PIBBSS community and hands-on operational support, the program aims to unblock them to develop and test ambitious research directions that build on PIBBSS-style analogies between natural and artificial intelligent systems. Successful affiliates are expected to generate high-quality, legible research outputs, join or found research groups and secure independent funding, thereby expanding the pool of experienced alignment researchers and strengthening the field’s conceptual foundations.
The PIBBSS × Iliad Research Residency is a pilot program jointly organized by PIBBSS and Iliad to explore how advanced mathematical expertise can accelerate progress in AI alignment. Running from January 5 to February 13, 2026 as an in-person (with limited remote option) six-week residency at the London Initiative for Safe AI, it invites PhD and postdoctoral-level researchers in mathematics, physics, computer science and related fields to work closely with mentors on new lines of mathematical AI alignment research. Residents spend the program developing a substantial research proposal while participating in lectures, seminars and a research retreat, and receive a stipend scaled by seniority. At the end of the residency, Iliad helps participants submit their proposals to philanthropic and institutional funders with the goal of securing 6 · 24 months of follow-on support, for example by starting new research groups, continuing inside academia or joining Iliad.
The PIBBSS × Iliad Research Residency is based on the belief that mathematically sophisticated academics are well positioned to contribute foundational insights to AI alignment if they are given focused time, mentorship and a path to sustained support. By immersing participants in a six-week applied-mathematics program on AI alignment, pairing them with experienced mentors and guiding them to produce concrete research proposals, the residency aims to seed new research directions in mathematical alignment. Iliad’s commitment to help residents secure 6 · 24 months of follow-on funding is intended to turn these proposals into ongoing research projects or groups, thereby increasing the amount and quality of rigorous mathematical work on AI safety.