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.
The Psychological and Social Risks team
AISI is launching a new Psychological and Social Risks workstream, focussed on understanding and mitigating the risks that arise from repeated or prolonged human-AI interaction. Research areas of interest will include understanding risks such as persuasion, overreliance, impairment to wellbeing, and compromised user-decision making, as well as examining the effect of model behaviors like deception, sycophancy, and anthropomorphism. The team will develop behavioral and psychological research methodologies to assess these risks and provide actionable insights. We are starting by recruiting an ambitious workstream lead to spearhead the work.
The workstream will be situated within AISI’s research unit and you will report to Chris Summerfield, our Societal Impacts Research Director.
Role Summary
As workstream lead for this novel team, you will build and lead a multidisciplinary team to evaluate and mitigate the behavioural and psychological risks that emerge from AI systems. Your teams’ work will address how human interaction with advanced AI can impact human users, with a focus on identifying and preventing negative outcomes. You will need to:
- Build and lead a talent-dense, multidisciplinary, and mission-driven team with diverse skill sets relevant for this endeavour
- Develop and deliver a cutting-edge research agenda focused on the psychological and behavioural risks of AI systems;
- Lead a team which designs and runs experiments to evaluate specific impacts of AI behaviour and capabilities on users;
- Manage a diverse portfolio of research projects, including both internally and externally delivered research.
- Forge relationships with key partners in industry, academia, and across Government, including the national security community;
- Act as part of AISI’s overall leadership team, setting the culture and supporting staff
The position offers a unique opportunity to push forward an emerging field, whilst part of an organization that is a unique and fast-growing presence in AI research and governance.
Person specification:
You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience, and attitudes:
- A track record of working to ensure positive outcomes for all of society from the creation of AI systems
- A clear understanding of the emerging risks related to AI-human interaction, and a vision for how to conduct impactful research in this area.
- Experience managing behavioural science research. It is an additional benefit if you have experience designing studies that explore human interaction with technology or AI.
- Strong track record of leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver multiple exceptional scientific breakthroughs or high-quality products. We’re looking for evidence of an ability to lead exceptional teams.
- Comprehensive understanding of large language models (e.g. GPT-4). This includes both a broad understanding of the literature, as well as hands-on experience of leading research that involves pre-training or fine-tuning LLMs.
- Demonstrable commitment to improving scientific standards and rigour, through the development and implementation of best practice research methods.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex research findings into actionable insights for policy makers.
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).
