Legal

Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how AI Safety Saarland (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, uses, and protects your personal data in connection with your participation in our educational programs, community events, fellowships, and digital spaces such as Slack communities.

We are a nonprofit organisation based in Germany working to reduce the risks posed by advanced AI systems and to support individuals who want to upskill, collaborate, and work in AI alignment, governance, technical safety, or adjacent research areas.

We process your data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, BDSG).

What Data We Collect and Why

As the “data controller,” we’re the ones who decide how and why your personal data is used. Since we run our own programs, events, and platforms, it’s our job to handle your data responsibly and transparently. We collect the minimum personal data necessary to deliver our mission and community services.

1. Program Applications & Participation

When you apply to one of our programs (whether as a participant in a fellowship, workshop, retreat, or recurring course, or as a mentor), we collect the details we need to understand who you are and how we can best support you. This may include:

• Your name, email, and basic contact info
• Your background or affiliation (e.g., student, researcher, professional)
• Your responses to application questions, including motivation statements or CVs
• Your preferences for program topics (e.g., technical alignment, governance, community building)
• Your general availability for calls, mentoring, or events (via tools like Calendly or Zoom)

Why we collect this: So we can select participants fairly, coordinate logistics, and tailor our programs to your needs and goals. It also helps us make sure we’re reaching a diverse and relevant community.

2. Event & Community Participation

If you attend our events or join our online spaces, we’ll collect some basic data to help things run smoothly and make the experience better for everyone. This might include:

• Your RSVP, including your name and attendance, for things like meetups, hackathons, or retreats.
• Feedback you give in post-event surveys or check-ins, where collecting it anonymously is not feasible.
• Details about your career progression (e.g., if you are hired as a result of the support we’ve provided).

Why we collect this: It helps us manage logistics, understand what’s working, and improve inclusivity and community engagement. We also use this data (often in anonymised form) to report on our reach and impact, both for ourselves and sometimes for funders.

3. Ongoing Career Support & Referrals

If you’re receiving career advice or ongoing support from us, we may keep track of a few things to better tailor that support. This could include:

• Notes from 1:1 conversations or mentoring calls (always with your awareness).
• Your stated interests, skills, and long-term career goals.
• A record of any introductions we’ve made to other organisations, job boards, or funding opportunities.

Why we collect this: So we can support your career journey more effectively, and (if you’ve agreed to it) refer you to relevant people, organisations, or opportunities in the AI safety and effective altruism (EA) ecosystem.

Lawful Basis for Processing

Under the GDPR, we need a legal basis to process your personal data. Depending on the context, we rely on the following:

• Legitimate interests – Most of our day-to-day processing falls under this. For example:
  • Running events, courses, and fellowships smoothly.
  • Sharing limited participant info (like your name or topic preference) with trusted facilitators, mentors, or course partners within the AI safety and EA ecosystem.
  • Using anonymised or aggregated insights to understand what works, improve future programming, and guide our outreach to others with similar interests.
  • Maintaining internal systems (Slack, Airtable, etc.) to stay organised.
• Consent – We’ll always ask before:
  • Referring you to an external organisation, job, or funding opportunity (we usually ask you to confirm that you want us to refer you to external organisations in our Expression of Interest form, or during conversations about your career goals).
  • Featuring you in a testimonial or case study.
  • Adding you to ongoing communications that aren’t strictly necessary (e.g., newsletters or alumni Slack groups). You can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Contractual necessity – When you formally join one of our programs or mentoring tracks, we may need to process your data to deliver what we promised.
• Legal obligation – We have to retain certain records (like donation data) for accounting or compliance reasons.

If you ever want to opt out of optional data use or have questions about how we apply these legal bases, just reach out. For newsletters and mailing lists, you will find an “unsubscribe” option at the end of every email.

Data Sharing

A. Trusted Processors

We use a small number of widely adopted, GDPR-compliant services:

• Google Workspace / Gmail (email, drive, forms)
• Squarespace (email sign-up)
• Slack / WhatsApp (community collaboration)
• Luma (event registration)
• Zoom / Calendly (meetings, scheduling)
• Airtable / Notion (application management, internal notes)

These tools are under Data Processing Agreements and may store data outside the European Economic Area. We ensure appropriate safeguards are in place (e.g., Standard Contractual Clauses).

B. Application Selection for Fellowships

If you apply to our Interdisciplinary Research Incubator, we may share your application with the mentors you applied to.

C. Referrals Within the AI Safety Ecosystem

With your explicit consent, we may share your name, profile, and career goals with:

• Other AI safety or EA organisations running fellowships, grants, or jobs
• Researchers or mentors relevant to your interests
• EA-aligned employers or hiring platforms (e.g., 80,000 Hours, AI Safety Hub)

Consent is always sought before any such referral.

Data Retention

We retain your data only as long as necessary:

• Program and event data: 12 months from your last engagement
• Slack and community participation: until you request deletion or have been inactive for 12 months
• Referral and coaching notes: deleted upon your request or after 12 months of inactivity
• Survey data: aggregated and anonymised after 24 months

We may send you a reminder before deleting inactive profiles.

Your Rights Under the GDPR

As someone whose data we process, you have rights under the GDPR. These include the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct anything that’s inaccurate or out of date
• Ask us to delete your data (“the right to be forgotten”) when it’s no longer needed
• Limit or object to how we use your data in certain situations
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format, where technically feasible

If you’d like to exercise any of these rights, or if you have any other questions about how we process your personal data, just email us at info@ais-saarland.org. We’ll get back to you within one month.

Supervisory Authority

If you have concerns about how we process your personal data, we encourage you to reach out to us directly first. However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with Germany’s supervisory authority:

Updates to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. Significant changes will be announced via email or Slack. The latest version will always be available on our website.

Last updated: 01.10.2026