Career Advice & Opportunities

Career Advice & Opportunities

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This is a link post for the 2023 AI Governance Curriculum

There is a growing ecosystem of professionals and organizations aiming to positively shape the long-term impacts of AI. This week, we’ll dive into the question, What kind of work is happening in this ecosystem, and—if you want to join the efforts to positively shape AI’s future—how can you do so?

Like AI governance research itself, AI governance career opportunities are rapidly changing, so current opportunities and advice are likely far from all that will ever be available. As another caveat, the below resources are not comprehensive. For example, there is little or no material below on relevant careers in entrepreneurship, grantmaking, field-building, or hardware companies.

If you’re at all curious about a type of work, we’d encourage you to check out the relevant resource(s)—people sometimes rule themselves out too early by having inaccurately narrow views about what they’re good fits for. (For example, did you know that AI strategy research can be highly empirical? Or that there are engineering roles in AI governance? Or that introverted, non-U.S. citizens can succeed in U.S. policy roles?)

Core Readings

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Out of the following career resources (all from 2022), read all of the ones that seem potentially relevant to you. Many of these areas may be more neglected, promising, and accessible than they first seem, so we encourage you to have a broad notion of what career paths are potentially relevant to you (the following links include broad context on each path).
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Make sure you’re aware of opportunities for funding from philanthropic organizations interested in mitigating existential risks—applications are often quick, not extremely competitive, and can potentially get you funding support for e.g. your independent research, productivity, academic degrees, self-study, and professional exploration.

Additional Recommendations

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The nonprofit 80,000 Hours hosts an AI safety & policy job board, and it offers personalized career advising.

General advice:

Advice for researchers:

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“Less technical / AI strategy / AI governance” section of “A Central Directory for Open Research Questions” (Aird, 2020) - More research ideas (although some of these are far too large in scope for a part-time project lasting several weeks)

More advice for undergraduates

More advice on some specific career paths: