Sumaya Nur Adan | Decentralized Safety Infrastructure for AI: Verifiable Compute Hubs for a Multipolar World
Foresight Institute’s Computation Group
Decentralized Safety Infrastructure for AI: Verifiable Compute Hubs for a Multipolar World
Abstract: As AI systems diffuse more rapidly and broadly, a widening gap is emerging between where advanced capabilities are deployed and where the security infrastructure required to manage their risks is available.Today, efforts to secure AI are largely concentrated in a few countries (e.g., US) and a handful of corporate or government labs ($500 billion through Stargate, $85 billion from Alphabet in 2025 alone, $460 billion in total infrastructure spending in 2024). These actors focus on vertically developing new tools, but little attention is paid to how defensive technologies reach others outside the frontier AI states. with major investments in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and beyond (e.g., UAE–G42, Saudi data centers, India’s national compute programs). The research asks: What security assurance infrastructure exists for AI data centers, and what are the barriers to deployment in emerging compute hubs? Comparing established contexts (US) with emerging hubs (UAE), this work maps current security practices—technical and institutional—and identifies critical gaps.
Speaker Bio: Sumaya Nur Adan is a DPhil candidate at Oxford researching decentralized AI security infrastructure and its role in enabling trustworthy and beneficial AI deployment globally. She previously served as an AI Risk Analyst at the UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology working on AI risk assessment. She is also a research affiliate at the AI Governance Initiative where she leads research on Global AI majority. Sumaya has made contributions to various international initiatives, including the ITU work on AI for Good Summit 2025 as lead researcher on Themes and Trends of AI 2025, and the African Commission’s work on AI and human rights. She was previously a fellow at the Centre for AI Governance and Institute for AI Policy and Strategy. Sumaya holds an MPhil with distinction in Ethics of AI, Data, and Algorithms from the University of Cambridge and an LLB from Strathmore University. https://aigi.ox.ac.uk/people/sumaya-nur-adan/
A group of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs in computer science, ML, cryptocommerce, and related fields who leverage those technologies to improve voluntary cooperation across humans, and ultimately AIs.
Nominate a seminar presenter/topic
Share this application with colleagues who’d like to join
Our book Gaming the Future: Technologies for Intelligent Voluntary Cooperation is now online on Substack.