Associate

Schmidt Sciences is a nonprofit organization founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that works to accelerate scientific knowledge and breakthroughs with the most promising, advanced tools to support a thriving planet. The organization prioritizes research in areas poised for impact including AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space—as well as supporting researchers in a variety of disciplines through its science systems program.

About the AI & Advanced Computing Center (“AI Center”) 

The AI Center at Schmidt Sciences is a grantmaking and research group that views AI as a transformative force for scientific discovery and societal progress. Over the next decade, we aim to support key researchers who are working to make AI systems competent, trustworthy, reliable, and able to effectively partner with human scientists on the next generation of discovery. We will also make selected distinctive investments in beneficial AI areas where philanthropy has a unique advantage. By supporting enabling infrastructure, foundational research, and targeted programs in science disciplines, the AI and Advanced Computing Center will create the conditions for AI-enabled discovery to achieve its promise.   The AI Center currently has three focus areas:    1. AI for Science – using AI to improve how scientists generate hypotheses, conduct experiments, analyze data, and produce new knowledge – and do this in a way that specifically accelerates the discovery process.   2. Science of AI – understanding and controlling AI systems to mitigate and manage potential risks from advanced AI. Improve AI reliability and performance in areas of limited commercial interest and market failure. Existing programs include AI2050 and Science of Trustworthy AI.    3. Beneficial AI – providing scientific foundations and datasets for understanding the larger human impacts of AI. This includes selected high-impact grantmaking, such as our programs to use AI to accelerate humanities research, and to quantify the impact of AI on the labor market.

We are looking to hire up to 3 associates to support the following programs: 

• The Science of Trustworthy AI: This program aims to support technical research that improves our ability to understand, predict, and control risks from frontier AI systems while simultaneously enabling their trustworthy deployment.
• Interpretability: This program funds basic and applied AI interpretability research, focusing on detecting deceptive model behaviors like sycophancy and knowingly harmful advice, enabling us to inspect what models are thinking and not just what they say, and better judge when their outputs can be trusted.