General Expression of Interest
Flexible / Dependent
Potential Future Roles: ARC Evals (Now METR) – Expressions of Interest /
Flexible / Dependent /
Hybrid
Introduction
The evaluations project at the Alignment Research Center is a new team building capability evaluations (and in the future, alignment evaluations) for advanced ML models. The goals of the project are to improve our understanding of what alignment danger is going to look like, understand how far away we are from dangerous AI, and create metrics that labs can make commitments around (e.g. 'If you hit capability threshold X, don't train a larger model until you've hit alignment threshold Y'). You can learn more about the project at this linked post on the Alignment Forum.
General Interest Submission
We’d like to hear from anyone who would like to work with us in any capacity. We're pretty unsure about our longer-term hiring plans and contractor needs, and we are open to expressions of interest and proposals. Some groups that may want to use this form could be alignment researchers, engineers, communicators, operations specialists, contractors offering a specific service, and those that aren’t quite ready to seek a new position.
If you don’t fit those categories but believe you can potentially help evals with its work, please also feel free to use this to register your interest.
Our operations lead created and used a form like this at a different EA org. He reached out to an individual for a small project, and based on the experience working together and success of that project, that person became a leader at a prominent EA organization.
Here is a list of potential future roles.
Application Process
We’ll ask you to attach your most recent CV and let us know what ways you think you could potentially contribute to the ARC Evaluations team. We plan to keep expressions of interest in our system long-term, and to review them as new needs come up. We don’t expect to respond to submissions here unless and until we believe there is a potential fit for our team or work. It may be that we reach out far into the future (e.g. in 1 year) as new needs develop.
We also may not review your application to this for some time (it's more of a candidate roster we review on occasion). If you're interested in actively working for us now, you should apply to an opening if there is one fitting.
If we choose to move forward with your application, we'll typically ask you to do 1 to 3 work tests (in addition to 1-2 interviews).
For some roles the first of these work tests is expected to take less than 45 minutes, for others, it may take up to three hours. If we ask you to do a work test that is expected to take more than 1 hour (typical interview length), we will compensate you at a competitive hourly rate for your time.
After the first 1-2 work tests, we'll schedule an interview to discuss the ideas behind the project, what you're looking for in a role, ask you any questions we have, and provide time for any other questions you have.
After that we'd optimally do a 1-4 week trial period; we're open to figuring out how to manage this with each candidate.
Other Information
Location
We're based out of Constellation offices in Downtown Berkeley. For technical roles, we fairly strongly prefer someone who can be in-person, but WFH some days of the week is fine, and remote is not a complete dealbreaker.
For operations roles, we expect to only consider candidates who can relocate and work in-person.
We should be able to sponsor visas for technical roles for those who need them (and as ARC is a non-profit, we don't have to go through the visa lottery for H1-B). There is a small chance we can sponsor for non-technical roles as well; we expect to only consider pursuing this for exceptional candidates.
Pay and Benefits
Compensation is competitive with Bay Area tech roles (excluding equity). We provide unlimited PTO to all employees.
Currently, ARC’s benefits are limited to long-term disability, health insurance, and a generous mental health allowance. We covermore than 90% of platinum health insurance premiums. We may be open to implementing additional benefits as requested by employees or promising candidates.
Miscellaneous
We encourage you to apply even if your background may not seem like the perfect fit! We would rather review a larger pool of applications than risk missing out on a promising candidate for the position.
We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity in all aspects of our hiring process. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our open positions.
