Scale believes that the future of artificial intelligence depends not only on powerful models but on the people who teach them to think. The Human Frontier Collective (HFC) is a new community created for those people: researchers, academics, and domain experts who are shaping the next frontier of AI.
HFC represents a new kind of expert network. It was built for researchers, scientists, engineers, and thinkers who want their knowledge to make a measurable impact on how AI learns, reasons, and aligns with human judgment. The collective brings together experts from leading universities, research institutions, and industries to collaborate, exchange ideas, and strengthen the foundations of responsible AI.
More than 80 percent of HFC members hold STEM PhDs, and over 80 percent come from top-tier institutions such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. Credentials matter, but curiosity defines the group. Members share a belief that the most meaningful advances in AI will come from diverse human insight.
"Even if I cannot code, I can still contribute to the advancement of AI. HFC showed me that expertise comes in many forms and that every discipline has something valuable to teach." &mdash; Tram Nguyen, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
HFC gives experts both the space and the structure to collaborate on lasting work. Members co-author research papers, participate in roundtables, and lead domain-specific discussions that strengthen the intellectual foundation of AI. Their contributions, from evaluations and analyses to new methodologies, form an evolving body of work that helps models reason and make decisions more effectively.
Beyond research, HFC is an active intellectual community. Members join virtual sessions, small-group discussions, and events where they exchange ideas on frontier topics including interpretability, reasoning, climate modeling, and bioinformatics. Each conversation contributes to a growing archive of knowledge available to future fellows.
"It is exciting to know that whatever my time with HFC brings, I have contributed something meaningful. It feels good to be taken seriously as an expert." &mdash; Taylor Knapp, Astrophysics PhD, Caltech
AI progress still depends on human discernment. The Human Frontier Collective was built to ensure that the people behind AI, those who understand how systems, sciences, and societies function, remain central to its evolution.
"The Human Frontier Collective is a great way to extract hard-earned knowledge into models that last. It motivates me to study harder, read more research, and share what I know." &mdash; Jongmin Sung, Applied AI Research Engineer
Behind every experiment, model, and dataset are people whose expertise makes AI reliable, accountable, and safe. The Human Frontier Collective exists to bring those people together.
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A community of PhDs, academics, and industry experts advancing AI through research, collaboration, and shared expertise.