Announcing the ITAM AI Futures Fellowship

By AmAristizabal, Jaime Andres Fernandez @ 2023-07-28T16:44 (+43)

We are thrilled to introduce the AI Futures Fellowship, an eight-week program in Mexico City (January and February 2024) designed to support exceptional individuals in understanding and mitigating catastrophic and existential risks from advanced AI.

(applications closed) 

About the Program

For eight weeks, fellows will join the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City and have the opportunity to interact with a rich intellectual community of AI researchers visiting Mexico City in January and February 2024.

Fellows will pursue a project agreed upon with a mentor at the beginning of the program. We generally expect fellows to produce a research report on a specific problem in various AI subfields, but we are open to different outputs. For example, fellows may also focus on learning more about a particular topic in AI, such as interpretability research, global race dynamics, or compute governance, and summarize their findings. Fellows may also collaborate with other participants or experts of the program.

There will be weekly meetings, seminars, and Q&As with leading experts in the field.
 

Mexico City Office

The fellowship will take place in an office space located in La Condesa, a very green and calm  area of Mexico City. The office faces Amsterdam street and Parque Mexico, which offer a fantastic mix of nature, cafes and restaurants.
 

Who Should Apply?

We are looking for early-career individuals and students from all over the world. We expect most participants to be at the late undergraduate, Master, Ph.D., and postdoctoral levels, but other exceptional candidates are also welcome. While we expect candidates to apply their research skills and knowledge to issues of advanced AI, they are not required to have previous technical experience or expertise in machine learning or AI. 
 

For Potential Mentors

We are actively seeking mentors for our program, so fill out this form if you think this could be you! The role will be tailored to the fellows’ needs, but it might involve the following responsibilities:

• Help a fellow define a project and support them throughout its execution (This may be a project you’ve been interested in doing but haven’t found the time to work on!)
• Availability to commit ~1 hour weekly for 8 weeks to support the fellow (this can include reviewing drafts and having regular calls).
• Assist the fellow in expanding their professional network, identifying additional resources, and valuable opportunities.
• Offer career guidance and motivation whenever needed. However, our staff will meet regularly with mentees to follow up on their time management, accountability, wellbeing and intrinsic motivation. You are primarily expected to provide object-level guidance.
   

There is a compensation of $1000 USD for the valuable time and effort invested by mentors. 

Mentors can be remote: you don’t need to come to Mexico to be eligible. That said, we want to encourage in person collaboration and synergies, so if you are interested in spending some time in Mexico City during the winter, consider applying as a mentor interested in visiting Mexico.
 

Feel free to email any questions to info@aifuturesitam.org 
 

To recommend this opportunity to potential candidates, share our website with your contacts.