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SAGA / About
What we are#
SAGA (Safety and Alignment Group Ahmedabad) is a research, discussion and study community for people in Gujarat who want to engage seriously with AI safety. We run roundtables, debates, reading circles, and talks. We circulate pre-reads. We argue.
The people who build, invest in, and govern AI in India need to actually grapple with the arguments about where this technology is going and what could go wrong.
Most of the serious safety conversation is happening in a small number of labs and research institutes, almost all of them in the US and UK. The field needs more talent, founders remain undervalued, and there is tractable work that could be happening right now. India will contribute enormously to how AI develops, through its engineers, its companies, and its regulatory posture. We are trying to create a space for AI safety in western India.
“AI will be built and used at scale in India. We want people here who understand how to make it safe.”
Why Ahmedabad#
Ahmedabad has a dense concentration of tech companies, institutions, and labs, with a startup ecosystem building on frontier models at scale. Almost none of these people have exposure to the safety conversation. Getting to them early, before the norms are set, is the point.
Safety thinking from non-Western contexts will eventually matter. What counts as a catastrophic outcome, what governance structures are realistic, what alignment looks like for systems deployed at scale in India.
Theory of change#
Discover and connect talent
We are finding and connecting people across western India who have the will to work on something that matters. Building a directory of researchers, founders, and practitioners who want to contribute to AI safety and linking them to each other and to the global field.
Create a space for regular engagement
Have a place where people can regularly discuss, discover, and get into AI safety and alignment work. Reading circles, roundtables, debates, and talks — a rhythm of serious conversation that builds real understanding over time, not one-off events.
Collect ground-level data on AI risk perception
Understand what the growth of AI means to people here — common people, academics, VCs, founders. How are risks perceived? What do people worry about, and what do they dismiss? This kind of ground-level data from India barely exists and matters enormously for governance and field strategy.
Encourage for-profit AI safety work
Push AI safety problem statements into companies and the startup ecosystem. We believe companies, institutions, and labs have the possibility to do good. Safety should not be confined to nonprofits and research institutes — it needs to be embedded in the products people are actually building.
Longer term: fellowships and bootcamps
The reading group is not the end state; it is how people figure out whether they want to go further. For now we point them to established programmes and introductions to the global field. In time, with the right partners, we would like to run structured fellowships and bootcamps ourselves.
What we actually do#
Working through foundational papers together, biweekly. One paper at a time — circulated a week before so everyone comes in prepared.
Small-group discussions on a single focused question, with pre-reads circulated beforehand. Planned as a monthly session. Mostly curated; some open.
Structured, steel-manned arguments on contested questions in AI safety. Oxford-style format — not yet scheduled.
Sessions with researchers and practitioners working on safety, in India and abroad.
In the works: AI safety bootcamps and fellowships. If you'd like to help make these happen, partner with us.
Organisers#
Reading list#
New to AI safety? We maintain a curated list of papers, courses, and books, from first orientation through to technical alignment, governance, and ways to go deeper.
FAQ#
Get involved#
If you are in Ahmedabad and want to attend a session, sign up on the join page. If you represent a company, university, lab or community and want to host, sponsor or co-run something, see how we partner. Researchers and practitioners who want to speak can write to us.
