About the Verification track

What it covers

The course runs from the question of why verification matters at all to the design of a regime that has to work without trust. Modules 0 and 1 are the conceptual on-ramp: why anyone should care, and who holds the decisions and the evidence. Module 2 covers the verification infrastructure itself across the hardware, cloud, intelligence and human layers. Module 3 red-teams that whole stack through evasion scenarios. Module 4 asks how to layer imperfect mechanisms into something realistic, and ends in the capstone.

Who it is for

It is pitched at an intermediate level. It assumes you are willing to read a policy document closely and argue with it, and it does not assume you can build the mechanisms it describes. The material is as much institutional and legal as it is technical.

How it is organised

Around a graph, not a reading list. Each unit feeds specific skills, and the later ones only stand up once the earlier ones do — the constellation on the front page is that graph, and the course objectives are read straight off it so the two cannot drift apart. The Skill Map shows the same graph with your own progress filled in, and it opens from your notebook on any course page.

The course asks for writing throughout: short written tasks inside the lessons, and most modules end in one longer written output — a memo, brief, map or essay — applied to a concrete verification problem. The Memo Desk lists every one of them by module: the memos and briefs are drafted there, brief beside the page, and each lesson task links back to the lesson it is answered in, with your saved answer beside it once you are signed in. Like the Skill Map, the desk opens from your notebook.

Taking it

• Enrolled. Signing in saves your progress and lets you join a cohort.
• On your own. No account, nothing saved, same material.

About UChicago XLab

Founded in 2022 at the University of Chicago, the Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab) is an interdisciplinary research organization dedicated to the analysis and mitigation of risks that threaten human civilization's long-term survival. We focus on critically under-addressed areas: AI safety, biorisk, nuclear security, and extreme climate change, recognizing the urgent need for more expertise and innovative thinking in these fields. Since these issues don't fit neatly into pre-existing academic silos, XLab was created to serve as a coordinating locus for work on existential and global catastrophic risk on the UChicago campus, bringing together scholars from across the academy. We support direct research and provide a venue for students to build expertise in our focus areas.

The legacy of existential risk work at the University of Chicago dates back to Enrico Fermi and the world's first nuclear chain reaction under the historic Stagg Field. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the creator of the well-known Doomsday Clock, was originally founded in 1945 by UChicago scientists from the Manhattan Project who were concerned about the emerging dangers. XLab was founded in the same spirit of concern and commitment to mitigating the great threats of our time.