AI Industry Associate

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is hiring an AI Industry Associate/Lead to develop a vision for a pro-human path for AI development, framed around controllable, verifiable, human-centered AI tools, as opposed to the development and adoption of maximally autonomous general AI systems. The AI Industry Associate/Lead will engage with policy makers on how AI innovation and safety regulation can go hand in hand.

We are open to hiring a range of seniorities for this role. Exact title and scope will reflect the successful candidate's experience.

This role will report to our Head of European Policy and Research.

Who we are

FLI educates and engages lawmakers, key stakeholders, and the general public about transformative technologies and their implications. We advocate for policies and approaches that mitigate catastrophic risks while advancing positive futures for humanity.

Humanity stands at a fork in the road with AI. One path races to replace humans as creators, caregivers, decision-makers, and workers—threatening our economy, security, civil liberties, democracy, and the human experience. But a better path exists: trustworthy, controllable AI tools that amplify human capability, strengthen institutions, and help us solve problems we cannot solve alone.

This role will focus on developing and advocating a credible strategy for AI that does not depend on building maximally general, autonomous systems to replace humans wholesale. Instead, we can build an economically powerful alternative rooted in reliable, verifiable, controllable, human-directed, and purpose-driven AI.

As AI Industry Associate/Lead, you will:

• Strategy development (as Lead): Develop a rigorous argument that a credible AI strategy need not depend on building or adopting maximally general, autonomous AI systems.

• Tracking industry developments: Monitor and support non-hyperscaling technical paths. This includes the development of efficient/smaller models, open-source and open-science AI, physical AI/robotics, and high-value industrial and scientific data applications.

• Engage stakeholders and build coalitions: Interface with policymakers interested in exploring sovereign AI strategies including Brazil, Canada, EU Member States and its AI Office in Brussels.

• Translate strategy into concrete asks: Produce policy-ready recommendations for policymakers.

Required qualifications:

• Experienced technology strategist, ideally in AI policy. This could be within industry, at a start up, or within the policy space.

• Sufficient technical fluency in advanced AI — capabilities trajectories, agentic systems, evaluation and verification methods — to engage credibly with technical experts and to hold a position against the prevailing scaling consensus.

• Experience engaging policymakers outside of the US and China, or a demonstrated capacity to do so.

Required skills and qualities:

• Excellent written and spoken communication, able to produce policy-ready analysis and to represent FLI in expert and/or high-level settings.

• Proven experience translating technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

• Stakeholder management and partnership building skills, ideally across institutions, industry and international partners.

• Independence and initiative — comfortable owning a strategy line and moving quickly in a fast-changing field.

• Alignment with FLI's mission of mitigating catastrophic risk while advancing positive futures.

Preferred qualifications, skills and qualities:

• A graduate degree in a relevant field — economics, computer science, or a technical AI discipline.

• Previous experience at a tech start up, or similar experience of how things get done in the technology industry.

• Background in, or close knowledge of, a safety-sensitive industrial sector where reliability is a hard operational requirement rather than a preference.

• An existing network among frontier AI researchers and relevant policymakers.

Location: We are happy to consider candidates in any location, but would have a preference for those based in or willing to relocate to Europe.

Application Deadline: 15th November 2026. We may move this role to rolling applications after this deadline.

Start Date: We'd like the chosen candidate to start as soon as possible after accepting an offer.

Application Process: Apply by uploading your resume, alongside a short answer to the following questions:

• In 200 words or less, please describe a time when you successfully persuaded a group of people to change course. What was your strategy and what actions did you take concretely?

• In 200 words or less, how can and should states not exporting major AI models pursue "sovereign AI"?

Please apply via our website. Email applications are not accepted.

FLI aims to be an inclusive organization. We proactively seek job applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds. If you are passionate about FLI’s mission and think you have what it takes to be successful in this role even though you may not check all the boxes, please still apply. We would appreciate the opportunity to consider your application.

Questions may be directed to jobsadmin@futureoflife.org.

About the Future of Life Institute

Founded in 2014, FLI is an independent non-profit working to steer transformative technology towards benefitting life and away from extreme large-scale risks. Our work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and policy engagement.

Our work has been featured widely, including in The Washington Post, Politico, Vox, Forbes, The Guardian, the BBC, The Economist and Wired.

Some of our achievements include:

• Superintelligence Statement, an open letter calling for a prohibition on the development of superintelligent AI until there is strong public buy-in and scientific consensus that it can be developed safely and controllably. The letter has been signed by more than 130,000 people, including Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Steve Wozniak, Richard Branson, Steve Bannon, Prince Harry and Susan Rice.

• The Asilomar AI Principles, one of the earliest and most influential sets of AI governance principles.

• The Pro-Human AI Declaration, a document with five guidelines on how AI development must be centred on humanity first, created during a meeting of bipartisan civil society groups spanning faith, labour, and think tanks.

• How would a nuclear war between Russia and the US affect you personally?- A scientifically accurate simulation showing the consequences of nuclear war, with over 6 millions views and a feature in Time Magazine.

• AI Safety Index - an objective rating of AI companies on key safety and security domains, as judged by experts in the field.

FLI is a largely virtual organization, with a team of approximately 40 distributed internationally, mostly in Europe and the US. We have four offices: Campbell in California, Brussels in Belgium, London in the UK, and Washington DC. We meet in person as a full team twice a year.