The Alignment Research Center is a small non-profit research group based in Berkeley, California, that is working on a systematic and theoretically grounded approach to mechanistically explaining neural network behavior. We are interested in scholars with a strong math background and mathematical maturity. If you'd be excited to work on the research direction described in this blog post – then we'd encourage you to apply!
ARC will be supervising projects that fit into our technical research agenda, which is outlined on our blog. See for example this post.
Most projects will be primarily theoretical in nature. These could involve developing mechanistic estimation algorithms (such for as the expected outputs of MLPs), or coming up with counterexamples to existing algorithm proposals. There are also a variety of high-level theoretical questions about the limits of broad classes of approaches that we are interested in.
A smaller number of projects may also involve some empirical work, such as implementing proposed algorithms to check their performance, or might study more philosophical questions about how our methods could be applied to produced aligned AI systems.
Scholars will work out of ARC's offices in Berkeley (though we might take a London-based scholar as well). Each scholar will meet with their mentor at least once a week for an hour, though 2-3 hours per week is not uncommon. Besides time with their official mentor, scholars will likely spend time working in collaboration with other researchers; a typical scholar will likely spend about 25% of their time actively collaborating or learning about others' research.
Essential:
Preferred:
Scholars are encouraged to collaborate with anyone at ARC, including full-time researchers and other scholars/visiting researchers. Scholars are also welcome to collaborate with researchers outside of ARC, and are encouraged to do so when outside researchers have expertise that we could benefit from.
Each scholar will be paired with the mentor that best suits their skills and interests. The mentor will discuss potential projects with the scholar, and they will decide what project makes the most sense, based on ARC's research goals and the scholar's preferences.
Most scholars will work on multiple projects over the course of their time at ARC, and some scholars will work with multiple mentors.