Research Manager - Control Team
About the AI Security Institute
The AI Security Institute is the largest team in a government dedicated to understanding AI capabilities and risks in the world.
Our mission is to equip governments with an empirical understanding of the safety of advanced AI systems. We conduct research to understand the capabilities and impacts of advanced AI and develop and test risk mitigations. We focus on risks with security implications, including the potential of AI to assist with the development of chemical and biological weapons, how it can be used to carry out cyber-attacks, enable crimes such as fraud, and the possibility of loss of control.
The risks from AI are not sci-fi, they are urgent. By combining the agility of a tech start-up with the expertise and mission-driven focus of government, we’re building a unique and innovative organisation to prevent AI’s harms from impeding its potential.
Control Team
Our team's focus is on AI Control to ensure that even if frontier systems are misaligned, that they can be safely used for high-stakes tasks. To achieve this, we are attempting to advance the state of conceptual research into control protocols and corresponding safety cases. Additionally, we will conduct realistic empirical research on mock frontier AI development infrastructure, to identify flaws in theoretical approaches and refine them accordingly.
Role Summary
Few things can accelerate our work more than great managers. Your role will involve a combination of strategy, research direction setting, people management of around 4 people and mentorship/coaching. Your team will be working on developing the science of Control - for example researching approaches to collusion busting or developing control techniques for data poisoning. It may also involve enabling implementation of Control techniques, in close collaboration with frontier labs.
The role will involve close collaboration with our research directors, including Geoffrey Irving and Yarin Gal. From a compute perspective, you will have excellent access to resources from both our research platform team and the UK's Isambard supercomputer (5,000 H100s).
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 managing a research or engineering team.
- Experience setting the research direction, in collaboration with senior researchers.
- Strong understanding of the field of AI Control.
Salary & Benefits
We are primarily hiring individuals at the more senior ranges of the following scale (L5-L7). The full range of salaries are available below.
- Level 3 - Total Package £65,000 - £75,000 inclusive of a base salary £35,720 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £29,280 - £39,280
- Level 4 - Total Package £85,000 - £95,000 inclusive of a base salary £42,495 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £42,505 - £52,505
- Level 5 - Total Package £105,000 - £115,000 inclusive of a base salary £55,805 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £49,195 - £59,195
- Level 6 - Total Package £125,000 - £135,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £56,230 - £66,230
- Level 7 - Total Package £145,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of £76,230
This role sits outside of the DDaT pay framework given the scope of this role requires in depth technical expertise in frontier AI safety, robustness and advanced AI architectures.
There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.
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).
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