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The Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) distributes insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent the spread of malaria. After a decade of extensive research, it has been identified by the leading charity evaluator focused on international development, GiveWell, as one of the most effective charities working to improve health in developing countries.

AMF has been able to scale up to $50m per year with only two full time staff, protecting millions of people from malaria. AMF could scale even further using funding from GiveWell, but is constrained by the time of the current two staff.

This role is an opportunity to add capacity to the team and help them scale up even faster, while also learning from an extremely productive team. You’ll have a wide range of responsibilities, from talking to AMF’s distribution partners in Africa, to preparing financial reports.

You might be a good fit for this role if you have exceptional organisational skills, are highly analytical, and are highly motivated to help AMF succeed.

AMF is also hiring for an IT developer, which we also consider as very high impact.

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The Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI) is one of only a few academic institutes in the world working on solving the AI control problem, which we see as one of the world’s most important and neglected research questions. It was established at UC Berkeley, one of the top schools for Computer Science, with a large grant from the Open Philanthropy Project and has many of the top researchers in AI and robotics.

The Assistant Director will play a crucial role in the early stages of establishing this institute, autonomously managing its day-to-day operations. You’ll need to be highly organised to coordinate with the university bureaucracy, manage finances, run events, draft grants, hire new staff, and manage collaborations with other organisations. Basically, you’ll handle anything that needs to be done.

We think this role will also provide you with excellent career capital: intelligent coworkers and contacts within an important field, a high degree of autonomy, and the opportunity to manage a large, fast-growing organisation.

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Founders Pledge is a non-profit that encourages entrepreneurs to make a commitment to donate at least 2% of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. In just a few years, they have raised $200 million in legally-binding pledges of equity, and are growing fast.

The Deployment Coordinator helps advise the founders when they make their exit on where to donate, as well as about the mechanics of the donation. This position provides an opportunity to present effective altruist giving opportunities, encourage wealthy individuals to give more at a crucial moment, and discuss their next career steps after exit. We estimate founders who have taken the pledge will donate at least $10m next year, increasing to over $30m per annum within the coming years. So a small increase in how well the funds are spent could be hugely impactful.

You’ll also have the opportunity to learn how to promote effective giving from a team with a great track record, and to learn about charity evaluation while managing a team of researchers.

Other roles
Founders Pledge is also hiring for their growth and community teams, as well as generalist researchers.

With the exception of the below, these jobs are not yet advertised, but if you think you would be a good fit and want to find out more, email why you would be a good fit, attaching your CV or LinkedIn, to: peter.mcintyre@80000hours.org.

Country Manager for Germany
Berlin
Founders Pledge is expanding to Germany, an important European startup hub. You’ll need strong interpersonal skills and grit, as the your impact in this role will be through marketing and sales.

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GiveWell has conducted some of the highest-quality research into which programmes and charities within international development will most help people for each dollar donated.

Research Analysts with an outreach focus work closely with GiveWell’s research team and use their in-depth understanding of the research to communicate it to donors, as well as others who rely on GiveWell’s work, such as researchers or the media.

This role has the potential to raise millions of dollars for GiveWell’s top recommended charities, and finding someone with especially good fit could substantially increase this figure. GiveWell has also consistently reported being talent-constrained rather than funding-constrained. It’s also a great opportunity to learn about the cutting-edge of charity evaluation and how to promote effective philanthropy.

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Disclaimer: 80,000 Hours is being considered by the Open Philanthropy Project, which works closely with GiveWell, to receive a grant.

GiveWell has conducted some of the highest-quality research into which programmes and charities within international development will most help people for each dollar donated.

The Operations and Legal Program Manager will contribute to the smooth running of the organisation by recommending and implementing improvements and managing projects in many domains for which the operations team is responsible. We see this as a high-impact position because around $100m (and growing) is allocated on the basis of GiveWell’s recommendations each year, so even modest improvements to the efficiency of the organisation could lead to millions of dollars of extra donations. GiveWell also consistently reports being highly talent-constrained rather than funding-constrained.

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Disclaimer: 80,000 Hours is being considered by the Open Philanthropy Project, which works closely with GiveWell, to receive a grant.

IARPA is a government agency that funds research to improve security and the U.S. intelligence community. IARPA has supported research into cybersecurity; how to improve biosecurity and pandemic preparedness; and some of the earliest experiments into how to improve geopolitical forecasts (as covered in Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasting). The director of IARPA has shown interest in reducing the risk of human extinction, an area we consider among the most neglected and important problems facing the world.

Program Managers create, run and advocate for IARPA’s funding programmes. A typical programme involves tens of millions of dollars of funding. You’ll also be able to establish a career in the intelligence community, one of the major players in forecasting and mitigating global catastrophic risks.

Program Managers historically accepted either have a PhD, or substantial expertise in a relevant area of scientific research. To be admitted, you’ll need to develop an example funding proposal.

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The Open Philanthropy Project is a new philanthropic foundation with billions of dollars of committed funds. It’s a collaboration between GiveWell and Good Ventures, which was founded by the co-founder of Facebook, Dustin Moskovitz, and former Wall Street Journal reporter Cari Tuna. It does world-leading research into which global problems are most urgent, and how to donate to charity most effectively. It makes grants of over $100m per year, and is aiming to reach over $400m per annum within the next few years. It has the potential to make a huge impact on neglected global problems like AI safety and biosecurity, and to influence the wider culture of philanthropy.

The Grants Associate will help process philanthropic grants totalling several tens of millions of dollars per year. They will coordinate between Open Philanthropy staff and grantee organisations to collect all necessary information, ensure legal compliance, and free up time for the research staff.

As a new organisation with plenty of funding, Open Philanthropy is mainly constrained by how fast it can identify and train people who fit the culture and mission. They report being highly talent-constrained rather than funding-constrained. By taking this role you will be helping them scale up more rapidly, so if you’re a good fit for the role, it may be one of the highest-impact things you can do. You’ll also be able to learn from the world-class GiveWell team and Open Philanthropy’s expertise on effective altruism.

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Disclaimer: 80,000 Hours is being considered by the Open Philanthropy Project to receive a grant.

We think solving the AI control problem is one of the world’s most important and neglected research questions. If you could make a technical contribution to this research, it’s likely to be one of the highest-impact things you could do with your life.

This is particularly true because a significant amount of funding has emerged for this research in the last two years, but the relevant organisations struggle to find people with the right skills, meaning that the area is highly talent-constrained. Beyond this technical impact, it can also be effective to work alongside technical teams to influence the culture towards greater concern for safety and positive social impact.

What follows are some of the best job openings within the leading organisations that undertake technical research relevant to the control problem.

To get these research positions, you will probably need a PhD in a relevant quantitative subject, such as computer science, maths or statistics, as well as familiarity with the latest research into AI safety. The engineering positions usually require at least a few years’ experience (except internships), and a varying degree of knowledge of machine learning. If you’re not at that stage yet, read our profile on how to enter AI safety research.

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Google DeepMind is probably the largest and most advanced research group developing general machine intelligence. It includes a number of staff working on safety and ethics issues specifically.

Research Scientist
Research Scientists at DeepMind set the research agenda in exploring cutting-edge Machine Learning and other AI techniques to solve real world issues. On the safety team, you would work closely with the DeepMind founders to explore how to ensure that as AI systems become increasingly powerful, they work for the benefit of all.

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Program Manager
Program Managers at DeepMind do what’s necessary to facilitate novel research, using their exceptional organisational skills to coordinate projects and manage people and deadlines. We see this position as important because i) DeepMind is an important organisation in AI safety, and ii) it has great potential for building your skills and using them to work with safety researchers.

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Research Engineer
Being a Research Engineer would be similar to being a Program Manager in the mechanisms for potential positive impact, but rather than providing organisational research support you would primarily be developing the algorithms, applications, and software used by the research team.

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See all jobs at DeepMind.

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UC Berkeley is one of the top schools for Computer Science, and the goal of CHAI is to ensure that as the capabilities of AI systems increase, they continue to operate in a way which is beneficial to humanity.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Postdoctoral Researchers will have considerable freedom to explore topics within this area, allowing them to work on the control problem.

Successful candidates will work with the CHAI Director, Stuart Russell, or with one of the Berkeley co-Principal Investigators, Pieter Abbeel, Anca Dragan, and Tom Griffiths.

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The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) was one of the first groups to become concerned about the risks from AI in the early 2000s, and has published a number of papers on safety issues and how to resolve them.

Research Fellow
Research Fellows work to make progress on the alignment problem, which involves novel research on a number of open problems in computer science, decision theory, mathematical logic, and other fields. MIRI are looking for Research Fellows for both their traditional and machine learning agendas. MIRI selects candidates strongly on math talent and weighs traditional academic backgrounds less heavily than other research positions in AI safety. So if you think you’d enjoy research in a non-traditional academic background, and get along with the team, this is an excellent path to contribute to solving the control problem.

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OpenAI was founded in 2015 with the goal of conducting research into how to make AI safe and ensuring the benefits are as widely distributed as possible. It has received $1 billion in funding commitments from the technology community, and is one of the leading organisations working on general AI development.

Machine Learning (Researcher)
This position is a research role with the a broad remit, so it’s an opportunity to do vital work on the ‘control problem’ of ensuring AI safety. To get this role, you need to have shown exceptional achievements in a quantitative field (not necessarily ML/AI), and have a shot at being a world expert. For this reason, this role is incredibly competitive, but if you can get it, it’s likely to be one of your highest-impact options.

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Special Projects
The Special Projects role involves working on one of the projects listed here, which are “problem areas likely to be important both for advancing AI and for its long-run impact on society”. They were formulated by experts we believe are trying to improve the long-run safety and consequences of AI/ML systems, and we see this as a concrete area in which those with the relevant background can contribute to their improvement.

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See all jobs at OpenAI.

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The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University was founded by Professor Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence. It has a number of academic staff conducting both technical and strategic research. AI safety is one of its focus areas.

Reinforcement Learning Intern
Interns on the technical research team have the opportunity to contribute to work on a specific project in reinforcement learning (RL). Previous interns have worked on software for Inverse Reinforcement Learning, on a framework for RL with a human teacher, and on RL agents that do active learning. We see this as an outstanding opportunity to work with an excellent team, improve your technical skills, and explore ideas with some of the key players in AI safety, while strengthening your application to graduate school.

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The development of powerful AI doesn’t only pose the technical challenge of the control problem, but also major political and social challenges. AI policy is fast becoming an important area, but policy-makers are overwhelmingly focused on short-term issues like how to regulate self-driving cars, rather than the key long-term issues (i.e. the future of civilization).

The following is a list of positions focused on policy and strategy research relevant to AI. If you could make a contribution to this area, it’s likely to be one of the highest-impact things you could do with your life. This is particularly true because a significant amount of funding has emerged for this research in the last two years, but the relevant organisations struggle to find people with the right skills, meaning that the area is highly talent-constrained.

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Google DeepMind is probably the largest and most advanced research group developing general machine intelligence. It includes a number of staff working on safety and ethics issues specifically.

Policy Researcher
This role would allow you to play a key role in researching the societal impacts of AI and advocating for the actions that ensure its use benefits others as much as possible. An example of this kind of research could be looking at what effects automation will have on the economy and what governments should do to prepare.

This role will become more important over time as AI systems have an increasingly large impact on society, allowing you to conduct novel research, and define strategy and responses into the immediate and long-run impacts of AI developments.

You’d be a good fit for this role if you have a strong understanding of the impact of emerging technology on society, experience in a policy setting, and an ability to synthesise information from a range of fields. As this is predominantly a stakeholder engagement position, you’ll also need outstanding communication and interpersonal skills.

DeepMind’s reputation, connections, opportunities to conduct novel and important research, focus on learning and professional development, and talented employees will also give you outstanding career capital.

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Legal or Policy Intern
The OSTP internships provide a coveted opportunity to work with senior White House officials, policy analysts, or the legal team on how science and technology intersect with the economy, national security, homeland security, health, foreign relations, and the environment. It’s likely to be one of the most important departments in determining the regulatory response to AI. It’s also an excellent launch pad into other science policy positions.

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CFI is a multidisciplinary research institute founded at the University of Cambridge with a £10 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust. As well as collaborating with researchers at the Centre’s sister organisation, The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, CFI works with centres at Oxford, Berkeley, and Imperial College London to examine the impacts of AI on humanity over the coming decades.

Research Assistant/Associate, Impact of AI
Research Assistants / Associates will investigate areas related to the impact, ethics or nature of AI. This is a new position that will enable you to pursue your own research objectives, and at the same time develop new projects and programmes acting as CFI’s ‘Research Programme Coordinator’. Given the freedom in setting a research agenda for yourself and other researchers to come, this would allow the right candidate to guide this research to higher impact areas.

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Researcher
IVADO, the parent organisation of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms and one of the top AI labs, is searching for a researcher to lead their investigation into the ethics of AI. As an early hire in this area and organisation, this is an opportunity to be one of the few researchers to explore the ethics of AI, and to create a new research agenda and culture which focuses on all of the implications of advanced AI, and not just those that will occur in the short term.

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Researcher
The Foundational Research Institute is one of the few organisations working on how to minimise the risks of large scale accidents or misuse of AI systems. As a researcher you’ll contribute to studying the scenarios in which development of advanced machine intelligence could negatively impact people and animals, and how to mitigate those scenarios. Remote working is available.

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Affiliate
The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI) is a nonpartisan think tank that aims to reduce the risk of events large enough to significantly harm or even destroy human civilization at the global scale. They’re seeking Junior Affiliates and paid senior “Associates” (at the doctoral level or equivalent) to collaborate on reducing these risks in their focus areas (global warming, nuclear war, pandemics, and artificial intelligence), as well as determining how to assess and compare them (their ‘Integrated Assessment’).

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Project Manager
The AI Index, an offshoot of the AI100 project, is a new effort to measure AI progress over time in a factual, objective fashion. The committee (comprising leading scientists like Eric Horvitz and Erik Brynjolfsson) is seeking a project manager for the first stage of defining the index. This is an important role for improving AI safety because tracking AI progress over time is likely to improve forecasting.

From the announcement:

“The tasks involved are to assist the committee in assembling relevant data sets, through both primary research online and special arrangements with specific dataset owners. The position calls for being comfortable with datasets, strong interpersonal and communication skills, and an entrepreneurial spirit. The person would be hired by Stanford University and report to Professor emeritus Yoav Shoham. The position is for an initial period of six months, at full time employment, though a slightly lower time commitment is also possible. Interested candidates are invited to send their resumés to Ray Perrault at ray.perrault@sri.com.”

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(Search for AI Index)