London
The AI Safety Institute is the first state-backed organisation focused on advanced AI safety for the public interest. We launched at the AI Safety Summit because we believe taking responsible action on this extraordinary technology requires a capable and empowered group of technical experts within government.
Our staff includes senior alumni from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, start-ups and the UK government, and ML professors from Oxford and Cambridge. We are now calling on the world’s top technical talent to build the institute from the ground up. This is a truly unique opportunity to help shape AI safety at an international level.
We have ambitious goals and need to move fast.
Develop and conduct evaluations on advanced AI systems
We will characterise safety-relevant capabilities, understand the safety and security of systems, and assess their societal impacts.
Drive foundational AI safety research
We will launch moonshot research projects and convene world-class external researchers.
Facilitate information exchange
We will establish clear information-sharing channels between the Institute and other national and international actors. These include stakeholders such as policymakers and international partners.
About the Role
As a Senior Research Scientist at AISI, you will lead Research Scientists and Research Engineers in planning and executing on research directions in foundational AI safety. You’ll lead and contribute to projects aimed at improving the fundamental safety of advanced AI systems, making novel research contributions that are aimed at informing governance with technical tools on safe AI.
We draw on a wide range of disciplines, and value a diversity of research expertise across our four workstreams. You’ll be primarily associated with one of our research workstreams (please specify in your application which you’re most interested in, details below), but sometimes your work will intersect multiple workstreams:
You will work under Prof. Yarin Gal, and work closely with your team comprising of multiple Research Scientists, Research Engineers, and Software Engineers, as well as benefit from support from our cross-functional Platform Engineering team. You’ll also collaborate with external topic-level experts, contractors, partner organisations and policy makers to coordinate and build on external research.
Day-to-day, you may:
The ideal candidate will have the skills and experience that allow them to additionally:
There will be significant scope to contribute to the strategy of your workstream team and to design experiments with set-ups of increasing complexity.
Existing Civil Servants and applicants from accredited NDPBs are eligible to apply, but will only be considered on loan basis (Civil Servants) or secondment (accredited NDPBs). Prior agreement to be released on a loan basis must be obtained before commencing the application process. In the case of Civil Servants, the terms of the loan will be agreed between the home and host department and the Civil Servant. This includes grade on return.
For the senior research scientist role, you’ll have conducted ML research, research in a domain relevant to your primary workstream, or research at the intersection of your domain and frontier AI systems.
We expect experts in both ML and a specific domain relevant to one of our workstreams to be rare, so we encourage you to apply no matter which research expertise you’re excited to bring to the institute.
We look for the following skills, experience and attitudes:
Given the changing nature of the field, it’s most of all important to us to build a team with strong problem-solving skills and a preparedness to acquire any missing knowledge necessary to get the job done.
Owing to the rapid development of advanced AI systems, you will likely be up to date with the latest advancements.
Core requirements
Alongside your salary of £105,000, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £14,771 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance DSITrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk . If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints
Read Full Description