Announcing the 2023 CLR Summer Research Fellowship

By stefan.torges @ 2023-03-17T12:11 (+81)

We, the Center on Long-Term Risk, are looking for Summer Research Fellows to help us explore strategies for reducing suffering in the long-term future (s-risk) and work on technical AI safety ideas related to that. For eight weeks, fellows will be part of our team while working on their own research project. During this time, they will be in regular contact with our researchers and other fellows. Each fellow will have one of our researchers as their guide and mentor.

Deadline to apply: April 2, 2023. You can find more details on how to apply on our website.

Purpose of the fellowship

The purpose of the fellowship varies from fellow to fellow. In the past, have we often had the following types of people take part in the fellowship:

• People very early in their careers, e.g. in their undergraduate degree or even high school, who have a strong focus on s-risk and would like to learn more about research and test their fit.
• People seriously considering changing their career to s-risk research, who want to test their fit or seek employment at CLR.
• People with a strong focus on s-risk who aim for a research or research-adjacent career outside of CLR and who would like to gain a strong understanding of s-risk macrostrategy beforehand.
• People with a fair amount of research experience, e.g. from a partly- or fully completed PhD, whose research interests significantly overlap with CLR’s and who want to work on their research project in collaboration with CLR researchers for a few months. This includes people who do not strongly prioritize s-risk themselves.

There might be many other good reasons for completing the fellowship. We encourage you to apply if you think you would benefit from the program, even if your reason is not listed above. 

What we look for in candidates

We don’t require specific qualifications or experience for this role, but the following abilities and qualities are what we’re looking for in candidates. We encourage you to apply if you think you may be a good fit, even if you are unsure whether you meet some of the criteria.

• Curiosity and a drive to work on challenging and important problems;
• Ability to answer complex research questions related to the long-term future;
• Willingness to work in poorly-explored areas and to learn about new domains as needed;
• Independent thinking;
• A cautious approach to potential information hazards and other sensitive topics;
• Alignment with our mission or strong interest in one of our priority areas.

Priority areas

You can find an overview of our current priority areas here. However, If we believe that you can somehow advance high-quality research relevant to s-risks, we are interested in creating a position for you. If you see a way to contribute to our research agenda or have other ideas for reducing s-risks, please apply. We commonly tailor our positions to the strengths and interests of the applicants.

Further details

We encourage you to apply even if any of the below does not work for you. We are happy to be flexible for exceptional candidates, including when it comes to program length and compensation.

• Program dates: The default start date is July 3, 2023. Exceptions may be possible.
• Program length & work quota: The program is intended to last for eight weeks in a full-time capacity. Exceptions, including part-time work, may be possible.
• Location: We prefer summer research fellows to work from our London offices, but will also consider applications from people who are unable to relocate.
• Compensation: Unfortunately, we face a lot of funding uncertainty at the moment. So we don’t know yet how much we will be able to pay participating fellows. Compensation will range from £1,800 to £4,000 per month, depending on what our funding will look like when making final offers. We hope to be able to pay the full amount. We will update this information as we get more information. We also hope to cover travel and visa costs for Fellows who need to relocate to London for the Fellowship (as we have done in the past).
• Number of available positions: We expect to accept three to ten fellows. Again, this is subject to our funding situation at the offer stage.
• International applicants: We are a registered UK visa sponsor. In most cases, we expect to be able to sponsor temporary visas for successful international applicants who would like to come to the UK for the Fellowship. If you have questions about this, please ask us in the application form or reach out to us beforehand.

Further information

You can find further information about the application process and the program here. You can find further details about the experience of previous fellows here.