Overview

Please email info@rethinkpriorities.org if you have any questions about this role.

To apply for this program, please submit your resume and respond to the question prompts included in the application form. Please know that your application will be assessed primarily on the basis of your prompt answers, so please ensure they represent your fit for the role well. We ask that you spend no more than two hours preparing your responses; there are other logistical questions that have no time limit. You’re able to submit your application until October 24th EOD in your local time. 

About the Program

Are you finishing a degree or interested in developing your research skills within the effective altruism (EA) community? Rethink Priorities is committed to promoting knowledge and talent within the EA community by providing opportunities for new researchers to advance their professional careers and use their skills and knowledge to aid in the development of high quality research.

Rethink Priorities is creating a Fellowship Program, running between January and March of 2022, to mentor research talent into a future career analyzing questions related to AI Governance and Strategy. This involves exploring, across a variety of scenarios of how AI technology may develop over the next few decades, the question “how should firms, governments, and other actors plan for, steer, and respond to, these AI developments, to help ensure the developments are beneficial for society?” In contrast to other related organizations that work more on field-building, direct interactions with policymakers, and broad macrostrategy, our work slants more towards empirical analysis and specific intervention analysis.

Position details

  • This is a temporary research fellowship, starting on 2022 January 10 and ending on 2022 March 11, though we are flexible on these start and end dates.
  • This fellowship is open to full-time or part-time candidates (at least 20 hours per week).
  • ​​This fellowship is remote, and is open to candidates in most places in the world.
  • We do not require candidates to have formal academic credentials to be successful. For our fellowships, we don’t require any prior experience beyond the raw aptitude necessary to do well in our application process, though having one year of prior experience with AI/ML, computer programming, effective altruism, and/or longtermism would be helpful.
  • The wage for this position is $25 – $28 USD / hour.
  • We invite anyone who is interested to apply, regardless of background.

What you’ll do

  • Conduct research on important and diverse issues aimed at ensuring the development of AI is beneficial for society. Some specific projects you might look into include securing ML models against theft, analyzing possible international treaties that might help regulate AI, ensure that we can know certain qualities (such as trustworthiness) about the AI as it becomes more capable (especially beyond our ability to directly analyze), how to detect and mitigate failures in AI systems, and more.
  • Create concrete recommendations to advise the allocation of tens of millions of dollars a year among our interested audience of grantmakers, policymakers, and organization leaders.

Skills and experience you have

  • We don’t require any prior experience beyond the raw aptitude necessary to do well in our application process, although having one year of prior experience with AI/ML, computer programming, effective altruism, and/or longtermism would be helpful.
  • Comfort reaching out to experts in a variety of fields and working to reach relevant experts to provide feedback on your work
  • Comfort with quickly learning how to apply research outside your field of knowledge
  • Able to find, read, and critically apply academic research from a variety of disciplines
  • Comfort with independent, remote work (we’re a 100% remote team across five different countries)
  • Able to work during the fellowship period

What we’re offering

  • We expect to compensate our fellows between $25 and $28 USD / hour.
  • We offer comprehensive health coverage for the duration of the fellowship if it is appropriate regionally. We also offer up to two weeks of paid time off during the fellowship (additional time off may be taken unpaid).
  • Contribute to a fast-growing, high-impact organization — our research is taken seriously by key decision makers who influence hundreds of millions of dollars, and the interventions you research will be used to prioritize charitable giving by major foundations and other large donors
  • Flexible work hours (work on your own schedule)
  • Flexible work location
  • A caring team that looks out for each other, has a lot of fun, and values having a healthy life outside of work
  • Very low bureaucracy
  • We don’t provide snacks but we could mail you a box of Oreos if you want

Note before applying; Please do not include a cover letter with your materials, and refrain from including any sort of photograph or headshot of yourself, and certainly don’t include any personal information that is not relevant to the role you’re applying for (including marital status, age, identity traits, or any other personal information that is not related to the position). Additionally, please do not ask staff members involved in hiring to meet — to ensure fairness, we try to minimize these interactions, and requests for meetings with hiring committee members during the process will be declined.

Rethink Priorities is committed to building an inclusive, equitable and supportive community for you to thrive and do your best work; We’re committed to finding the best talent for our team, so please don’t hesitate to apply for a role regardless of your age, gender identity, political identity, personal preferences, physical abilities, veteran status, or any other background you may identify with. If you’d like to know more about what working at Rethink Priorities is like, you’re welcome to visit our Fellowship Opportunities site.

 

About Rethink Priorities

Rethink Priorities is a research organization aimed at uncovering insights to inform policymakers and major foundations about how to best set policy to help people and nonhuman animals.

Since the beginning of 2018, we’ve:

  • Created quantitative existential risk assessments, starting with estimating the harm of nuclear war
  • Researched ways to improve forecasting skills – such as looking at specification problems in forecasting or looking at data on forecasting accuracy across different time horizons and levels of forecaster experience
  • Evaluated interventions to improve democracy
  • Studied alternatives to QALYs for measuring wellbeing
  • Conducted a review of the impact of charter cities
  • Brought to light the important and neglected area of invertebrate welfare
  • And much much more!
  • Feel free to review our published work here

We’re backed by Open Philanthropy, Effective Altruism Funds, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and individual donors.

If you’d like to know more about our Fellowship Program and what joining Rethink Priorities is like, please feel free to learn more about our work culture on our site, where you can also learn about our selection process for this program.

About Rethink Priorities

Rethink Priorities is a research organization that conducts critical research to inform policymakers and major foundations about how to best help people and nonhuman animals in both the present and the long-term future.

Our research spans everything from animal welfare to the threat of nuclear war. We explore neglected but promising areas to improve the world and try to further build the community of researchers working on understanding how to do this most effectively.

We follow the principles of effective altruism, and are dedicated to using our resources to have the greatest impact on the lives of people and animals.