The Fellowship.
A global fellowship programme. The standing society of Thinking About Thinking. Fellows and ambassadors at work in more than 200 cities, in almost as many countries, kept in correspondence across the year.
The Fellowship is the standing society of Thinking About Thinking. It is composed of fellows and ambassadors: researchers, engineers, clinicians, artists and founders working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive science, robotics and mathematics. Members are distributed across more than 200 cities and almost as many countries; admission is by application or invitation and the membership grows by introduction.
We do three things. We gather: in person at seminars, conferences and salons and online in the Thought Channel, our private members hub, where we keep ideas across the year. We correspond: fellows and ambassadors light each other's work, exchange papers and books in the Reading Room and write to one another in private. We convene: co-hosting events with universities, labs, galleries and gardens whose work runs alongside our own.
What holds it together is a shared interest in one question: what intelligence is and how it comes to be.
This month's honorands.
Each month we name one Fellow and one Ambassador whose contribution has stood out to us. This month:
Ambassador, then Fellow.
You join in two steps. The Ambassador Programme is the open application route and is, in our experience, how most people first meet us. The Fellowship is the invitation-only standing body; you reach it by sustained contribution and by introduction.
By application. How most people first meet us.
The Ambassador Programme is a year-long, contribution-based role for students and early-career researchers doing serious, interdisciplinary work on intelligence. We've designed it to scale across universities, labs and time zones without giving up the intellectual standards that, in our view, make the work worth doing.
How much you contribute is flexible. We record what you do and, where appropriate, acknowledge it. Ambassadors who contribute consistently and well, we then consider for the invitation-only Fellowship.
- Help us run the conferences, summits and seminars.
- Share academic opportunities within your institution and your networks.
- Convene local meetups, reading groups and small gatherings.
- Act as the liaison between us and your university or lab.
- Take part in our discussions, on and off the record.
- Early or discounted access to our events and conferences; free in some cases.
- Invitations to our online seminars and community sessions.
- Recognition within our community.
- A network across disciplines and countries.
- A clear path toward the Fellowship.
We read every application.
We keep applications open on a rolling basis and read every one ourselves. Intellectual seriousness is, in our view, the more useful criterion; credential the less.
Write to applyBy invitation. The long walk in.
The Fellowship is our invitation-only standing body. You reach it by sustained contribution to the work, the correspondence and the standards we keep; and, in our view, being invited marks the beginning of a long and active membership rather than the end of a process.
- A commitment to careful thinking, clarity, and engagement with hard ideas.
- A history of organising: meetups, hackathons, journal clubs, reading groups.
- Sustained contribution to our work over time.
- Willingness to engage across disciplines, perspectives and methods.
- Generosity and reliability in contributing to the discussion.
- Private, closed-door seminars with our invited speakers and peers.
- Priority and VIP access to our summits, conferences and salons.
- Direct engagement with our speakers and the institutional leaders we host.
- A long-term intellectual community, with ongoing membership.
- Work references from us where appropriate.
There are no mandatory outputs, quotas, or performance metrics.
AE Global Summit
Open Problems for AI. Our annual three-day meeting in London. 25 to 27 November 2026.
Read more →Events and seminars
Our conferences, seminars and salons. Some public, some by application, some by invitation.
Read more →Recordings
Talks, panels and seminar sessions from our events, kept the way we've held them.
Read more →