Sydney AI Safety Fellowship

By Chris Leong @ 2021-12-02T07:35 (+16)

I’m excited to announce the launch of the Sydney AI Safety Fellowship which will provide fellows from Australia and New Zealand the opportunity to pursue projects in AI Safety or spend time upskilling. These projects may be technical projects, projects related to policy, or movement building projects.

The fellowship will take place at WeWork in Sydney which provides fantastic views, plus free coffee, beer and energy drinks. It will take place during the 7 weeks 10th of January to the 25th of February, but there will be the option to start a week earlier if so desired.

The fellowship would include:
• Coworking membership
• Talks and/or Q&A sessions from people involved in AI Safety
• Connection with others in the AI Safety community who may have similar interests or be able to provide support for your project
• Mentorship (may be someone relatively junior)
• A welcome dinner, final dinner, and social events (ie. watching a movie, rock-climbing, or whatever the fellows are interested in) - costs covered
• Free lunch once per week
• Whatever further activities the fellows decide to self-organise

We have funding for up to two (non-local) fellows to receive $1000 to help offset flights and accommodation. I know that this isn’t much compared to the costs, but it’s what we can commit to at the moment.

Fellows would be expected to spend four days a week at the coworking space working on projects or participating in other activities, although in some cases we might allow fellows to spend only three days a week if they needed to work to support themselves. There would be one day a week where we’d expect all of the fellows to attend so that we would be able to organise talks + have a meeting where fellows could share their ideas and ask for feedback.

There will also be up to two working fellowships available for people who are working as AI programmers or who otherwise have significant AI knowledge. These fellows will be able to pursue their normal work at the coworking space whilst also participating in the activities and sharing their knowledge with the fellows. They would have the option of pursuing a project part-time, which would provide an advantage during the application process, but this isn’t a requirement. Working fellows aren’t eligible for the non-local subsidy. They would receive half-subsidisation of a WeWork coworking membership and free access to the activities.

Applications will be processed on a rolling basis given the short timeline. For the best chance of being accepted, I recommend having your application in by 10 pm on the 9th of December, but we will still consider applications up to the 16th of December (we accidentally advertised earlier dates in some places). Depending on the number of applications we may make a decision based purely on your responses this form or we may ask to speak to you.

For any questions, please PM me.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfbJiuTMOaOz5vx-9K3Yk1rjMaIslgQBbIBDwER9yDDbgtKxQ/viewform