Work With Us
We seek to fill the following positions:
- Executive Director – Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public
- The CHAI Research Fellowship
- Research Collaborators
- CHAI Internships
If none of these positions are the right fit for you but you would still like to express an interest in working with us, please fill out this form.
General enquiries about jobs at CHAI can be sent to chai-info@berkeley.edu.
Executive Director – Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public
Stuart Russell has been selected as the inaugural director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public.
The Center’s core programs will advance the philosophy and ethics of science based on collaborative links to specific areas of science in which ethical questions are critical. The initial three focus areas are: gene editing (Berkeley Ethics and Regulation Group for Innovative Technologies – BERGIT), artificial intelligence (Center for Human-Compatible AI – CHAI), and neuroscience (Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute – HWNI). Guided by world-leading scholars, the Center will become a global resource, extending its research scope and policy leverage through working with faculty in the Graduate School of Journalism, Berkeley Law, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Haas School of Business, to ensure meaningful and sustained real-world impact.
The Executive Director position is for an individual with advanced training and/or experience related to the Center’s mission with a long-term career ambition to build and run a multi-disciplinary center from inception through its foundational period of growth to its establishment as a lasting institution. The position provides an exceptional opportunity to work with leading scholars who are at the forefront of their respective disciplines and whose public profiles are recognized around the globe.
For the application and more information about the role, please visit here.
The CHAI Research Fellowship
Start Date: Flexible
Compensation: Negotiated
Apply: Via this form
CHAI has created a new Research Fellowship and is seeking applications for the inaugural Fellows. CHAI Research Fellows will work with CHAI faculty members Stuart Russell, Pieter Abbeel, and Anca Dragan and will also have the opportunity to collaborate with CHAI affiliate faculty at Berkeley, other faculty members in Berkeley AI Research (where CHAI is located), and many other institutions. The Fellowship is aimed at training highly qualified postdoctoral researchers to carry out research to advance beneficial AI.
Duties of position
Given the broad and open-ended mandate of the Center to develop provably beneficial AI systems, the post holder will have considerable freedom to pursue novel research projects in areas such as reasoning, decision making, learning, multi-agent systems, and philosophical foundations using the tools of probability theory, game theory, control theory, etc. Topics of particular current interest include
- Theoretical foundations of intelligent agent architecture
- Expressive formal languages for probability models, including probabilistic programming
- Decision making over long time scales
- Cumulative lifelong learning
- Human-in-the-loop planning and reinforcement learning
- Human-robot interaction
- The structure and properties of human preferences
- Foundations for acting on behalf of multiple humans
- Robust cooperation in heterogeneous multiagent systems
- Mechanism design for human-machine systems
Depending on their interests, Fellows may also lead research collaborations with other CHAI researchers and Berkeley PhD students, advise more junior student researchers, and teach courses relevant to their research. Candidates for the Fellowship are assessed based on their academic and research achievements, as well as on personal merit and leadership qualities.
Qualifications
Candidates must have (or be about to obtain) a PhD in a relevant technical discipline (computer science, statistics, mathematics, or theoretical economics) and a record of high-quality published research. A solid understanding of current methods in AI and statistical learning would be an advantage. Candidates need not have done previous work on the AI control problem.
Salary & Visa Sponsorship
The CHAI Research Fellowships provide funding for one year, renewable up to three years given satisfactory performance. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience and based on UC Berkeley salary scales. The position is eligible for visa sponsorship. CHAI will also contribute to visa costs for Fellows and their dependents (partner and children).
Application
Apply via this form. Supporting documents include a resume, a one-page statement of interest describing in general terms the kind of research you would like to undertake at CHAI, and the names and email addresses of two academic referees.
Research Collaborators
Our core research spans computer science, mathematics, control theory, robotics, statistics, formal logic, economics (including game theory), cognitive psychology, or neuroscience. We may also be interested in moral philosophy, sociology, political science, law, and other fields dealing with formal and semiformal theories of human value systems.
If you are interested in collaborating on research that aligns with our mission, please fill out this form.
If you are currently at UC Berkeley, you are welcome to attend our weekly research seminars. Contact chai-info@berkeley.edu for details.
NOTE: Undergraduates interested in graduate study at Berkeley in this area should apply directly to the appropriate UC Berkeley graduate program. You may mention your interest in CHAI on your application, but we are unable to review or give feedback on your application. We will be happy to discuss research and/or supervision once you have been admitted.