About the AI Safety Institute
The AI Safety Institute (AISI), launched at the 2023 Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, is the world's first state-backed organization dedicated to advancing AI safety for the public interest. Our mission is to assess and mitigate risks from frontier AI systems, including cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, AI-enhanced chemical and biological threats, large-scale societal disruptions, and potential loss of control over increasingly powerful AI. In just one year, we've assembled one of the largest and most respected model evaluation teams, featuring renowned scientists and senior researchers from leading AI labs such as Anthropic, DeepMind, and OpenAI.
At AISI, we're building the premier institution for impacting both technical AI safety and AI governance. We conduct cutting-edge research, develop novel evaluation tools, and provide crucial insights to governments, companies, and international partners. By joining us, you'll collaborate with the brightest minds in the field, directly shape global AI policies, and tackle complex challenges at the forefront of technology and ethics. Whether you're a researcher, engineer, or policy expert, at AISI, you're not just advancing your career – you're positioned to have significant impact in the age of artificial intelligence.
Autonomous Systems
We're focused on extreme risks from autonomous AI systems - those capable of interacting with the real world. To address this, we're advancing the state of the science in risk modeling, incorporating insights from other safety-critical and adversarial domains, while developing our own novel techniques. We're also empirically evaluating these risks - building out one of the world's largest agentic evaluation suites, as well as pushing forward the science of model evaluations, to better understand the risks and predict their materialisation.
Role Summary
As a research scientist, you'll work as part of a multi-disciplinary team including scientists, engineers and domain experts on the risks that we are investigating. Your team is given huge amounts of autonomy to chase research directions & build evaluations that relate to your team’s over-arching threat model. This includes coming up with ways of breaking down the space of risks, as well as designing & building ways to evaluate them. All of this is done within an extremely collaborative environment, where everyone does a bit of everything. Some of the areas we focus on include:
- Research and Development (R&D). Investigating AI systems' potential to conduct research, particularly in sensitive areas. This includes studying AI capabilities in developing dual-use technologies, unconventional weapons, and accelerating AI and hardware (GPU) development.
- Self-replication. Researching the potential for AI systems to autonomously replicate themselves across networks establish persistence.
- Deceptive alignment. Evaluating AI systems' potential to display deceptive behaviours. This includes research into AI's ability to misrepresent its capabilities, conceal its true objectives, and strategically behave in ways that may not align with its actual goals or knowledge.
You’ll receive coaching from your manager and mentorship from the research directors at AISI (including Geoffrey Irving and Yarin Gal). We also have a very strong learning & development culture, including Friday afternoons devoted to deep reading and various weekly paper reading groups.
Person Specification
You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes. Please note that you don’t need to meet all of these criteria, and if you're unsure, we encourage you to apply.
- Experience working within a research team that has delivered strong scientific breakthroughs, in deep learning or a related field.
- Comprehensive understanding of large language models (e.g. GPT-4). This can include a broad understanding of the literature, and/or hands-on experience with things like pre-training or fine tuning LLMs.
- Strong track-record of academic excellence (e.g. spotlight papers at top-tier conferences).
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Experience working with multi-disciplinary teams, including both scientists and engineers.
Salary & Benefits
We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience within the research unit, and this advert allows you to apply for any of the roles within this range. We will discuss and calibrate with you as part of the process. The full range of salaries available is as follows:
- L3: £65,000 - £75,000
- L4: £85,000 - £95,000
- L5: £105,000 - £115,000
- L6: £125,000 - £135,000
- L7: £145,000
Selection Process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.
Required Experience
We select based on skills and experience regarding the following areas:
- Research problem selection
- Research science
- Writing code efficiently
- Python
- Frontier model architecture knowledge
- Frontier model training knowledge
- Model evaluations knowledge
- AI safety research knowledge
- Written communication
- Verbal communication
- Teamwork
- Interpersonal skills
- Tackle challenging problems
- Learn through coaching
Desired Experience
We additionally may factor in experience with any of the areas that our work-streams specialise in:
- Autonomous systems
- Cyber security
- Chemistry or Biology
- Safeguards
- Safety Cases
- Societal Impacts
Additional Information
Internal Fraud Database
The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned. The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to DLUHC as a participating government organisations. DLUHC then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented. For more information please see - Internal Fraud Register.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check and get baseline personnel security standard (BPSS) clearance before they can be appointed. Additionally, there is a strong preference for eligibility for counter-terrorist check (CTC) clearance. Some roles may require higher levels of clearance, and we will state this by exception in the job advertisement. See our vetting charter here.
Nationality requirements
We may be able to offer roles to applicant from any nationality or background. As such we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet the standard nationality requirements (opens in a new window).
