Code of Conduct

Last updated: 5th September 2026 by Leo Hyams

The Cape Institute for Safe AI (CISAI), (registration name: CISAI NPC) is a South African non-profit organisation focused on building AI safety capacity. CISAI runs fellowships, courses, reading groups, hackathons, and events to help people contribute to making AI systems safer. AI Safety South Africa (AISSA) is a network and volunteer group supported by the CISAI operations team.

This Code of Conduct articulates our expectations for participants of CISAI/AISSA online or physical spaces and activities. By participating in this community, you agree to uphold these standards and contribute to an environment where everyone can do their best thinking and most impactful work.

CISAI NPC is the responsible party (hereto referenced as “the organisation”) for community health of both CISAI and AISSA spaces. This code of conduct covers both officially branded CISAI and AISSA events, programs, and public assets.

Our Values

These values inform how we engage with each other and approach our work. Embodying a single value here is insufficient. As a participant of our spaces, you should aim to embody all three of these values, as they support and reinforce each other:

Curiosity

We aim to:

• Cultivate intellectual humility: recognising the limits of our understanding, articulating our assumptions clearly, and remaining open to being wrong.
• Avoid oversimplificiation, develop nuanced thinking, and discover possibilities that would otherwise remain hidden.
• Embrace paradox and hold complexity, and cultivate the ability to hold contradictory truths simultaneously when the situation demands it.
• Engage seriously with unfamiliar ideas, think critically, and form independent views based on evidence rather than social pressure.
• Cultivate a growth mindset, not placing fixed limits on the understanding and capabilities of ourselves and others.
• Be feedback orientated, and accept that other people may be able to see elements of our behaviour that we cannot.

Compassion

We aim to:

• Balance the seriousness of our mission with warmth, joy, and human connection.
• Speak honestly, while assuming good faith and caring about each other's wellbeing.
• Approach disagreements as opportunities for mutual understanding.