TL;DR:

We're excited to announce the eighth iteration of ARENA (Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator), a 4-5 week ML bootcamp with a focus on AI safety! Our mission is to provide talented individuals with the ML engineering skills, community, and confidence to contribute directly to technical AI safety. ARENA 8.0 will be running in-person from LISA from May 25th – June 26th, 2026 (the first week is an optional review of Neural Network Fundamentals).

Apply here to participate in ARENA 8.0 before 11:59pm on Sunday March 8th, 2026 (anywhere on Earth).

Summary:

ARENA has been successfully run seven times, with alumni going on to become MATS scholars, LASR participants and Pivotal participants; AI safety engineers at Apollo Research, METR, UK AISI, and even starting their own AI safety organisations!

This iteration will run from May 25th – June 26th, 2026 (the first week is an optional review of Neural Network Fundamentals) at the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA) in Shoreditch, London. LISA houses AI safety organisations (e.g., Apollo Research, BlueDot Impact), several other AI safety researcher development programmes (e.g., LASR Labs, PIBBSS, Pivotal, Catalyze Impact), and many individual researchers (independent and externally affiliated).

Being situated at LISA brings several benefits to participants, such as productive discussions about AI safety and different agendas, allowing participants to form a better picture of what working on AI safety can look like in practice, and offering chances for research collaborations post-ARENA.

The main goals of ARENA are to:

Find high-quality participants;
Upskill these talented participants in ML skills for AI safety work;
Integrate participants with the existing AI safety community;
Accelerate participants’ career transition into AI safety.

The programme's structure will remain broadly the same as in ARENA 7.0, with a few minor additions (see below). For more information on the ARENA 7.0 structure, see our website (soon to be updated with our new material).

Also, please note that we have a Slack group designed to support the independent study of the material (join link here).

Outline of Content:

The 4-5 week programme will be structured as follows:

Week 0 (Optional): Deep Learning Fundamentals

Before getting into more advanced topics, we first cover the basics of deep learning, including basic machine learning terminology, what neural networks are, and how to train them. We will also cover some subjects we expect to be useful going forward, e.g. using GPT-3 and 4 to streamline your learning, good coding practices, and version control.

Note: Participants can optionally skip this week of the programme and join us at the start of week 1 if i) they’re unable to attend otherwise and ii) we’re confident that they are already comfortable with the material in this week. It is recommended that participants attend, even if they’re familiar with the fundamentals of deep learning.

Topics include:

PyTorch basics
CNNs, Residual Neural Networks
Optimisation (SGD, Adam, etc)
Backpropagation
Hyperparameter search with Weights and Biases
GANs & VAEs

Week 1 - Transformers & Interpretability

This week, you will learn all about transformers and build and train your own. You'll also study LLM interpretability, a field which has been advanced by Anthropic’s Transformer Circuits sequence, and work by Neel Nanda and the Google DeepMind Interpretability Team. This week will also branch into areas more accurately classed as 'alignment science' than interpretability, for example, work on token-level analysis of reasoning models.

Topics include:

GPT models (building your own GPT-2)
Training and sampling from transformers
TransformerLens
In-context Learning and Induction Heads
Indirect Object Identification
Steering Vectors
Linear Probes
Pragmatic Interpretability

Week 2 - Reinforcement Learning

This week, you will learn about some of the fundamentals of RL and work with OpenAI’s Gym environment to run their own experiments.

Topics include:

Fundamentals of RL
Vanilla Policy Gradient
Proximal Policy Gradient
RLHF & RLVR
LoRA and GRPO
Gym & Gymnasium environments

Week 3 - Model Evaluations

This week, you will learn how to evaluate models. We'll take you through the process of building a multiple-choice benchmark of your own and using this to evaluate current models through UK AISI's Inspect library. We'll then move on to study LM agents: how to build them and how to elicit behaviour from them. We'll also have the option for participants to explore beyond evals, and study some of the methods used in AI control.

Topics include:

Constructing benchmarks for models
Using models to develop safety evaluations
Building pipelines for model evaluation
Building and eliciting LM agents
Introduction to AI control
Evaluation case studies

Week 4 - Capstone Project

We will conclude this program with a Capstone Project, where participants will receive guidance and mentorship to undertake a 1-week research project building on materials taught in this course. This should draw on the skills and knowledge that participants have developed from previous weeks and our paper replication tutorials.

Here is some sample material from the course on how to replicate the Indirect Object Identification paper (from the week on Transformers & Mechanistic Interpretability). An example Capstone Project might be to apply this method to interpret other circuits, or to improve the method of path patching. You can see some examples of capstone projects from previous ARENA participants here, as well as posts on LessWrong here and here.

Call for Staff

ARENA has been successful because we had some of the best in the field TA-ing with us and consulting with us on curriculum design. If you have particular expertise in topics in our curriculum and want to apply to be a TA, use this form to apply. TAs will be well compensated for their time. Please contact info@arena.education with any further questions.

FAQs:

Q: Who is this programme suitable for?

A: There’s no single profile that we look for at ARENA; in recent iterations, successful applicants have come from diverse academic and professional backgrounds. We intend to keep it this way – this diversity makes our bootcamps a more enriching learning experience for all.

When assessing applications to our programme, we like to see:

Applicants who genuinely care about AI safety and making the future development of AI go well;
Applicants who are able to code well in Python, and have some knowledge of the maths needed for modern AI (linear algebra, calculus, probability);
A solid understanding of how you might best contribute to technical AI safety, and how you expect ARENA to help you achieve your goals.

Since ARENA is an ML bootcamp, some level of technical skill in maths and coding will be required – more detail on this can be found in our FAQs. However, if our work resonates with you, we encourage you to apply.

Q: What will an average day in this programme look like?

At the start of the programme, most days will involve pair programming, working through structured exercises designed to cover all the essential material in a particular week. The purpose is to get you more familiar with the material in a hands-on way. There will also usually be a short selection of required readings designed to inform the coding exercises.

As we move through the course, some weeks will transition into more open-ended material. For example, in the Transformers and Mechanistic Interpretability week, after you complete the core exercises, you'll be able to choose from a large set of different exercises, covering topics as broad as model editing, superposition, circuit discovery, grokking, discovering latent knowledge, and more. In the last week, you'll choose a research paper related to the content we've covered so far & replicate its results (possibly even extend them!). There will still be TA supervision during these sections, but the goal is for you to develop your own research & implementation skills. Although we strongly encourage paper replication during this week, we would also be willing to support well-scoped projects if participants are excited about them.

Q: How many participants will there be?

We're expecting to accept around 30 participants in the in-person programme.

Q: Will there be prerequisite materials?

A: Yes, we will send you prerequisite reading & exercises covering material such as PyTorch, einops and some linear algebra (this will be in the form of a Colab notebook) a few weeks before the start of the programme.

Q: When is the application deadline?

A: The deadline for submitting applications is 11:59pm anywhere on Earth on Sunday March 8th, 2026.

Q: What will the application process look like?

A: There will be three steps:

Fill out the application form;
Perform a coding assessment;
Interview virtually with one of us, so we can find out more about your background and interests in this course.

Q: Can I join for some sections but not others?

A: Participants will be expected to attend the entire programme. The material is interconnected, so missing content would lead to a disjointed experience. We have limited space and, therefore, are more excited about offering spots to participants who can attend the entirety of the programme.

The exception to this is the first week, which participants can choose to opt in or out of based on their level of prior experience (although attendance is strongly recommended if possible).

Q: Will you pay stipends to participants?

A: We won't pay stipends to participants. However, we will be providing housing, food and travel assistance to our participants (see below). We aim to ensure that finances do not present a barrier to any candidates participating in ARENA.

Q: Which costs will you be covering for the in-person programme?

A: We will cover all reasonable travel expenses to and from London (which will vary depending on where the participant is from) and visa assistance, where needed. Accommodation, meals, and drinks and snacks will also all be included during the duration of the programme.

Q: I'm interested in trialling some of the material or recommending material to be added. Is there a way I can do this?

A: If either of these is the case, please feel free to reach out directly via an email to info@arena.education (alternatively, send JamesH a LessWrong message). We'd love to hear from you!

Links to Apply:

Here is the link to apply as a participant. We expect it to take about 90 minutes.

Here is the link to apply as a TA. You shouldn't spend longer than 30 minutes on it.

We look forward to receiving your application!