• 3 min read

Welcome to the SAIR Blog

Exploring the why, the how, and the vast opportunity ahead

About SAIR

The Science & AI Research Foundation (SAIR) is a US-based non-profit institution headquartered in the US that unites the world’s greatest minds, from leading scientists and universities to frontier enterprises — to advance discovery in the age of intelligent systems.

Led by pioneering figures such as Professor Terence Tao, SAIR funds frontier research, builds open scientific infrastructure, and convenes global conferences and awards programs celebrating breakthroughs at the intersection of science and AI.

At SAIR, our vision is simple yet profound: to empower global science in the age of intelligent discovery. We believe that the union of human intellect and machine intelligence has the potential to unlock new laws of nature, accelerate discovery, and expand the boundaries of human understanding.

But why does an institution like SAIR need to exist — today, now — and what gap are we filling? In this first blog post, we dive into the “why”, draw from how the research and AI ecosystem is evolving, and set out what we’ll bring to this blog series going forward.

1. The imperative for change in science

Science has always advanced via curiosity, experiment, iteration, collaboration. Yet for many researchers and institutions around the world the path is increasingly constrained by:

  • Funding bottlenecks: Many labs and universities struggle to obtain long-term, flexible funding that allows true creativity rather than short-term deliverables.
  • Infrastructure and compute access: High-end AI and computational tools can be prohibitively expensive or simply unavailable in many regions.
  • Siloed and closed research cultures: Many discoveries remain locked behind paywalls or institutional walls rather than being open, shared, auditable.
  • Scale of data, complexity of systems: As biology, physics, mathematics and social systems become ever more data-rich and complex, the old tools alone are often insufficient.

Against this backdrop, the role of AI in science is shifting rapidly. For example, researchers at Google Research introduced a “AI co-scientist” agent aimed at collaborating with human scientists to generate hypotheses and accelerate discovery. Meanwhile, recent reviews of “AI for Science” show that although the potential is real, broader adoption remains hindered by methodological and ecosystem gaps.

So the question becomes: if AI is going to transform science, are we ready for the cultural, structural, global shift required? That’s where SAIR steps in.

2. Why SAIR — our unique purpose

SAIR exists at the intersection of three converging opportunities:

a) AI + science: We recognize that AI is not just a tool for incremental improvement — it can change how we do science: from hypothesis generation, to experiment design, to data interpretation. But this requires new infrastructure, new funding modes, and new open frameworks.

b) Global inclusion and open science: Too often the frontier of science is dominated by a narrow set of institutions or geographies. We believe an open global ecosystem — where researchers everywhere can participate, contribute, and benefit — creates exponential advantage.

c) Ethical and collaborative approach: As we apply AI in science, issues of transparency, data governance, reproducibility and intellectual freedom become critical. SAIR is built around those values: open datasets, transparent standards, authors retaining ownership, and a community ethos rather than a closed platform.

In short: SAIR isn’t just funding more science; we are enabling revolutionary science — science done with AI, globally inclusive, open, collaborative, responsible. Researchers don’t just receive support — they also contribute knowledge and resources — anchoring a virtuous cycle.

3. What you’ll see from this blog series

In this weekly blog series, we’ll explore:

  • Deep dives into how AI is changing different scientific domains (physics, biology, math, social systems)
  • Stories from researchers, institutions and communities from around the world who are pushing on the frontier
  • Insights into infrastructure and funding models: what works, what doesn’t, how we at SAIR are thinking about it
  • Reflections on open science, data governance, reproducibility, and the ethics of AI in research
  • Preview of SAIR programmes, calls for proposals, fellowships, infrastructure access and community events

Our goal is not simply to post announcements. We want this blog to be a platform – for ideas, debate, showcase of frontier work, and a mirror of our ecosystem in action.

4. Invitation to join the journey

Whether you’re a physicist exploring new laws of nature, a biologist mapping complex systems, a mathematician uncovering hidden structures, or a social scientist modeling societies — the frontier is shifting. The opportunity is vast. The infrastructure, partnership and ecosystem must scale accordingly.

If you believe — as we do — that science should be open, shared, accelerated by the best tools, and global in scope, then we invite you to join us. Watch this space for upcoming calls, workshops and collaborative opportunities from SAIR.

Thank you for reading our first post. We look forward to sharing this journey with you — and building, together, the next wave of scientific discovery.

— The SAIR Team

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