Author: Nora Ammann

At its core, our goal in running this program is to counterfactually help produce substantial, high-quality and legible research progress on problems in AI risk, alignment and governance. The affiliate program aims to do this by supporting promising individual researchers in a highly tailored fashion to scope, develop, and progress on their personal research agendas. 

Concrete success scenarios might look like (but are not limited to) affiliates publishing insightful research results; joining the efforts of existing research groups or founding new ones; identifying, scoping, testing and building traction on novel or neglected research avenues; maturing their personal research agenda and secure independent funding; etc.

The PIBBSS Affiliate Program has the following key features: 

• Affiliates receive a salary of 5’000 USD/month/FTE. We are open to paying higher salaries to exceptional candidates. 
  • We are, by default, looking for affiliates who will be joining the program full-time. That said, we are open to adapting to affiliates’ circumstances where this seems appropriate, such as joining the program in a part-time fashion. We also have the capacity to offer support to people who do not want to leave their current research position.
• Affiliates benefit from a range of support structures aimed at helping them focus on and advance in their research endeavors, such as:
  • Quarterly research retreats bringing together affiliates as well as other alignment researchers from our extended network 
  • Personalized research and strategic support, typically in the form of bi-weekly calls with your point person (with option to adapt frequency of nature of support to affiliate’s needs and preferences)
  • Access to the PIBBSS research community and extended network, including joining our slack space, tailored introductions, opportunities to participate in workshops, etc. 
  • Financial and administrative support in order to e.g. visit relevant research conferences, get access to base models and compute where required for research, etc.
  • Access to office space depending on the needs/preferences of affiliates.
  • Note: A key feature of the program is to provide highly tailored support to our affiliates, according to what counterfactually helps them most make progress on their research. As such, the above list, while representative, is not necessarily fully precise or comprehensive.
• The initial duration of the affiliateship is 6 months, at which point we review affiliates for a possible extension to 12 months. In exceptional circumstances, we will make initial offers of 12 months. 
  • Our vision is for the affiliate program to provide a serious long-term home for promising researchers pursuing PIBBSS-style AI alignment research at time scales of 1 year and more, including the possibility of permanent positions. 
• We want to build on and strengthen the supportive, curious and dedicated culture that PIBBSS has built over the last two years. We care about good epistemic practices while navigating the intricacies of making sense of a complex world and particularly emphasize the value of epistemic pluralism in doing so. 

At the current point in time, we orient to the affiliate program with an experimental lens – testing the hypothesis that this program can provide significant value and learning about how exactly we can support our affiliates most effectively. Depending on what we learn, we might scale up or scale down, streamline the program or make it more tailored to individual affiliates, aim to have affiliates for time-limited or for open-ended periods, or do other things which increase the impact of the program.