ELSA — European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI
ELSA is an EU-funded network of excellence extending from ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems) — the major European academic research network for ML. ELSA coordinates technical AI safety research across European institutions.
Network
Member institutions include:
- CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (Germany)
- University of Helsinki (Finland)
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)
- Plus other ELLIS-affiliated labs across Europe
Focus
ELSA’s emphasis is on technical security, privacy, and trustworthiness of AI systems — closer to the robustness / information-security register than to the x-risk framing of ENAIS or FLI.
How It Differs From ENAIS
| Dimension | ENAIS | ELSA |
|---|---|---|
| Funding | Lightspeed grants, EA-aligned | EU Horizon (network of excellence) |
| Focus | Existential risk, governance, community | Security, privacy, technical robustness |
| Membership | Researchers + policymakers | Academic labs |
| Primary output | Network coordination, policy advocacy | Joint research, benchmarks, papers |
The two are complementary — ELSA provides technical depth, ENAIS provides x-risk policy framing and connective tissue.
Connection to This Wiki
- The technical-research counterpart to ENAIS in the European AI safety landscape.
- Aligns more with the wiki’s robustness, information-security, and capability-evaluations coverage than with existential-risk discourse.
Related Pages
- enais
- robustness
- information-security
- ai-safety
- capability-evaluations
- summary-ai-xrisk-belgium-europe
- existential-risk
- future-of-life-institute