Summer Research Fellowship 2025

Summary: CLR is hiring for our Summer Research Fellowship. Join us for eight weeks to work on s-risk motivated empirical AI safety research.

Apply here by Tuesday 15th April 23:59 PT.

We, the Center on Long-Term Risk, are looking for Summer Research Fellows to explore strategies for reducing suffering in the long-term future (s-risks) and work on technical AI safety ideas related to that. For eight weeks, fellows will be part of our team while working on their own research project. During this time, you will be in regular contact with our researchers and other fellows, and receive guidance from an experienced mentor.

You will work on challenging research questions relevant to reducing suffering. You will be integrated and collaborate with our team of intellectually curious, hard-working, and caring people, all of whom share a profound drive to make the biggest difference they can.

While this iteration retains the basic structure of previous rounds, there are several key differences:

  • We are particularly interested in applicants who wish to engage in s-risk relevant empirical AI safety work (more details on our priority areas below).
  • We encourage applications from individuals who may be less familiar with CLR’s work on s-risk reduction but are nonetheless interested in empirical AI safety research. To facilitate this, we have shortened the first round of the application process.
  • We are especially looking for individuals seriously considering transitioning into s-risk research, whether to assess their fit or explore potential employment at CLR.
  • We expect to make significantly fewer offers than in previous rounds, likely between two and four, with some possibility of making none. This is due to limited mentorship capacity.

Apply here by Tuesday 15th April 23:59 PT.

We're also preparing to hire for permanent research positions soon. If you'd like to stay informed, sign up for our mailing list at the page footer. We also encourage those interested in permanent positions to apply for the Summer Research Fellowship.

About the Summer Research Fellowship

Purpose of the fellowship

In this iteration of the fellowship, we are primarily looking for people seriously considering transitioning to s-risk research, who want to assess their fit or explore potential employment at CLR. This focus reflects our shifting research priorities and aims to expand CLR’s capacity in these new directions.

That said, we welcome applicants with other motivations though the bar for acceptance will likely be higher. In the past, we have often had fellows from the following backgrounds:

  1. People at the very start of their careers—such as undergraduates or even high school students—who are strongly focused on s-risk and want to explore research and assess their fit.
  2. People with a fair amount of research experience, e.g. from a partly- or fully completed PhD, whose research interests significantly overlap with CLR’s and who want to work on their research project in collaboration with CLR researchers for a few months. This includes people who do not strongly prioritize s-risk themselves.
  3. People committed to s-risk who are pursuing a research or research-adjacent career outside CLR and want to develop a strong understanding of s-risk macrostrategy beforehand.

Additionally, there may be many other valuable reasons to participate in the fellowship. We encourage you to apply if you think you would benefit from the program. In all cases, we will work with you to make the fellowship as valuable as possible given your strengths and needs. For many participants, the primary focus will be on learning and assessing their fit for s-risk research, rather than immediately producing valuable research output.

Priority areas

We are currently undergoing a strategic shift in our research priorities. Moving forward, the majority of our work will focus on s-risk-motivated empirical AI safety research in the following areas:

  • Personas/characters – How do models develop different personas or preferences? What are the most plausible training stories by which models develop malevolent or otherwise undesirable personalities? What preferences will misaligned models have by default, and what affordances will developers have to influence those preferences even if alignment does not succeed?
  • Multi-agent dynamics – How do models behave in extended multi-agent interactions, especially adversarial interactions where agents have conflicting goals? How well can we predict the behaviour models in extended multi-agent interactions from their behaviour on shorter and cheaper evals (e.g., single-turn evals)?
  • AI for strategy research – How can (future) AI assistants meaningfully contribute to macrostrategy research or other forms of non-empirical research? How could we verify that AI assistants were producing high-quality macrostrategy research?

For more details on our theory of change and our general approach to empirical s-risk research, please see our measurement agenda (although note our focus has somewhat narrowed since publishing that).

We will also continue to explore s-risk macrostrategy, with a particular focus on understanding when and how interventions in AI development can robustly reduce s-risk. While we may accept some summer research fellows to work on this area, we expect most fellows to focus on the empirical research agenda.

You can see our previous priority areas here and research agenda here - both remain highly relevant to our work. If you see ways to contribute to these areas or have other ideas for reducing s-risks, we encourage you to apply. However, our main focus will be on our current priority areas

If we believe that you can advance high-quality research relevant to s-risks, we are interested in creating a position for you. We commonly tailor our positions to the strengths and interests of the applicants

What we look for in candidates

We don’t require specific qualifications or experience for this role, but the following abilities and qualities are what we’re looking for in candidates. We encourage you to apply if you think you may be a good fit, even if you are unsure whether you meet some of the criteria.

  • Curiosity and a drive to work on challenging and important problems;
  • Ability to answer complex research questions related to the long-term future;
  • Willingness to work in poorly-explored areas and to learn about new domains as needed;
  • Independent thinking;
  • A cautious approach to potential information hazards and other sensitive topics;
  • Alignment with our mission or strong interest in one of our priority areas.

For those interested in empirical work, we are primarily interested in people who have programming experience. Previous experience doing research on LLMs is highly beneficial but not required.

We worry that some people won’t apply because they wrongly believe they are not a good fit for the program. While such a belief is sometimes true, it is often the result of underconfidence rather than an accurate assessment. We would therefore love to see your application even if you are not sure if you are qualified or otherwise competent enough for the positions listed. We explicitly have no minimum requirements in terms of formal qualifications and many of the past summer research fellows have had no or little prior research experience. Being rejected this year will not reduce your chances of being accepted in future hiring rounds.

Program details

We encourage you to apply even if any of the below does not work for you. We are happy to be flexible for exceptional candidates, including when it comes to program length and compensation.

Program dates

The default start date is Monday 30th June. Exceptions may be possible, but will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Location & office space

CLR is a remote-first organization with offices in Berkeley, California, and London, UK. We prefer fellows to be co-located with their mentor at one of our offices when possible.

We expect to facilitate in-person participation in London in most cases, including support with necessary immigration permissions or visas. However, we are unlikely to be able to sponsor US visas, so in-person participation in Berkeley is generally only possible for those with the right to work in the US.

Participants will have access to office space in London or Berkeley (for those with the right to work in the US), working alongside CLR staff and mentors.

Compensation

Fellows will receive a stipend of £4,925 per month.

In addition to the base stipend, we will provide funding for travel or immigration costs for fellows who relocate to London or Berkeley (for those with the right to work in the US) for the program. Funding will also be available for expenses to facilitate your productivity during the program.

Number of available positions & application base rates

We expect to accept between two and four fellows, though there is a possibility that we will not accept any. This uncertainty depends on our mentorship capacity and the outcome of upcoming hiring for permanent positions. We will keep applicants informed throughout the process.

In 2023, we received 174 applications for the summer research fellowship. We made 13 offers.

In 2024, we received 219 applications for the summer research fellowship. We made 10 offers.

Program length & work quota

The program is intended to last for eight weeks in a full-time capacity. Exceptions, including part-time participation, may be possible.

We’re also very happy for participants to take reasonable time out for other commitments such as holidays.

Application process

We value your time and we are aware that applications can be demanding, so we have thought carefully about making the application process time-efficient and transparent. Please let us know in your initial application if the timelines below definitely won’t work for you since we may be able to work something out; in some cases we might be able to give earlier decisions or expedite parts of the application process.

We plan to make the final decisions by Friday 30th May, and unfortunately we can’t accept any late applications at any stage.

Stage 1

To start your application, please complete our short initial application form. We expect this form can be completed in as little as 5 minutes if you just answer the required questions, though there is space to answer optional long-form questions.

The application deadline is 23:59 Pacific Time on Tuesday 15th April.

Stage 2

By the end of Friday 18th April we will decide whether to invite you to the second stage. The second stage consists of answering long-form questions. We expect this stage to take 1-3 hours.

The deadline for submissions for this stage is Sunday 27th April 23:59 PT.

Stage 3

By the end of Friday 2nd May, we will decide whether to invite you to the third stage. The third stage consists of a paid research test, which we expect will take around 8 hours of work. Applicants will be compensated with £350 for their work at this stage.

The deadline for submissions for this stage is Sunday 11th May 23:59 PT.

Stage 4

By the end of Tuesday 13th May, we will decide to invite you to interview by video call. For candidates interested in empirical roles, all candidates that have completed stage 3 will present the results of their work test in their research interview.

All interviews will happen by the end of Tuesday 27th May.

We will send out final decisions to applicants by Friday 30th May.

Diversity and equal opportunity

CLR is an equal-opportunity employer, and we value diversity in our programs. We welcome applications from all sections of society and don’t want to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, social background/class, mental or physical health or disability, or any other basis for unreasonable discrimination, whether legally protected or not. If you would like to discuss any personal needs that may require adjustments to our application process, please feel very free to contact us.

Why work with CLR

We aim to combine the best aspects of academic research (depth, scholarship, mentorship) with an altruistic mission to prevent negative future scenarios. So we leave out the less productive features of academia, such as administrative burden and publish-or-perish incentives, while adding a focus on impact and application.

As part of our fellowship, you will enjoy:

  • a program tailored to your qualifications and strengths;
  • working to facilitate a shared mission with dedicated and caring people;
  • an interdisciplinary research environment, surrounded by friendly and intellectually curious people who will hold you to high standards and support you in your intellectual development;
  • mentorship in longtermist macrostrategy, especially from the perspective of preventing s-risks;
  • the support of a well-networked longtermist EA organization with substantial operational assistance instead of administrative burdens.

You will advance neglected research to reduce the most severe risks to our civilization in the long-term future. Depending on your specific project, your work may help inform impactful work across the s-risk and AI safety ecosystem, or any of CLR’s activities, including:

  • Technical interventions: We aim to develop and communicate insights about the safe development of artificial intelligence to the relevant stakeholders (e.g. AI developers, key organizations in the longtermist effective altruism community). We are in regular contact with leading AI labs and AI safety research nonprofits.
  • Research collaborations: CLR researchers have recently been involved in collaborations with researchers from CMU, Oxford, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Google DeepMind.
  • Research community: in addition to the Summer Research Fellowship, CLR sometimes runs external research retreats, bringing together members of the research community to co-ordinate and make progress on problems.
  • Grantmaking: In addition to the CLR Fund, some of our staff advise Macroscopic Ventures, a foundation committed to using all of its funds to improve the quality of life of future generations.
  • New projects: In collaboration with people in our network, we are always looking for novel impactful organizations to set up. For instance, we have been involved in the founding of the Cooperative AI Foundation.

Other opportunities at CLR

We’ll soon be hiring full-time empirical researchers to work on our focus areas described above. If you are interested in these roles, please consider filling out the Summer Research Fellowship where you can indicate interest in permanent roles.

You can also subscribe to our mailing list by submitting your email at the bottom of our website.

Inquiries

If you have any questions about the process, please contact us at hiring@longtermrisk.org. If you’d like to send an email that’s not accessible to the hiring committee, please contact Harriet Patterson (Operations Manager) at harriet.patterson@longtermrisk.org.

Diversity and equal opportunity employment: CLR is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our organization. We don’t want to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, social background/class, mental or physical health or disability, or any other basis for unreasonable discrimination, whether legally protected or not. If you're considering applying to this role and would like to discuss any personal needs that might require adjustments to our application process or workplace, please feel very free to contact us.

 

Apply here by Tuesday 15th April 23:59 PT.