There are approximately 2-4 thousand researchers working full-time on frontier AI safety and security worldwide, including cyber, biosec, and loss-of-control risks. Based on the size of cybersecurity (4% US IT spend), high-risk industries like nuclear, aviation, and pharma (5-15% of staff on safety/security), and similarly important scientific endeavours (e.g., CERN, Manhattan project, Apollo program), the field of AI safety should grow ~10-50x. In this talk, MATS Research will discuss how to scale the science of AI safety & security to meet the emerging demand and which priority problems to target.

But scaling the field is not simply a matter of increasing headcount. It requires building the research infrastructure, institutional capacity, and talent pipelines necessary to support sustained scientific progress. A central challenge is how to develop these foundations while maintaining scientific rigor, enabling effective collaboration across disciplines, and ensuring that advances in AI safety and security research keep pace with increasingly capable AI systems.