Research Engineer, Rule of Law

Anthropic•San Francisco, CA

8d•$320,000 - $485,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Anthropic's mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems that are safe and beneficial for users and society. The Anthropic Institute is a new organization within Anthropic focused on studying the impact of AI on the economy, democratic institutions, and society. The Rule of Law Team specifically investigates how AI will impact constitutional democratic institutions, seeking ways to protect democratic freedoms through technology and policy. As a Research Engineer on this team, you will conduct technical and sociotechnical research at the intersection of AI and democratic institutions, contributing to safety evaluations, model improvement, institutional analysis, and the development of novel AI applications to support civic life and government. Your work will directly inform research publications, policy initiatives, safety systems, and products.

Requirements

Deep expertise in AI together with substantive expertise in government, law, political science, or public policy.
Advanced skills in deep learning, together with capabilities in data science, mechanism design, govtech, deliberative tech, or a related field.
Deep understanding of experimental design, data analysis and inferential statistics.
At least five years of work experience in academia, industry, or government.
Comfort navigating the ambiguity inherent to novel research, including settings where the objective itself is hard to define.
Strong technical skills in sociotechnical settings: thinking carefully about human factors, how AI systems interact with groups of humans, and human behavior.
Energized by working at the intersection of technical research and questions of democracy and institutional design.

Nice To Haves

Designing and running evaluations or fine-tuning experiments on large language models.
Large-scale data analysis.
UX and interface design, with an eye toward making complex tools intuitive for non-technical users.
Engineering with privacy considerations front of mind.
Research relating to deliberative technology, civic technology, or the societal impacts of AI.
Working with or within government, courts, legislatures, or public policy institutions.

Responsibilities

Design and run AI safety evaluations focused on legal alignment, and conduct technical work (including fine-tuning) to improve targeted aspects of model performance.
Leverage AI to analyze institutional vulnerabilities created or exacerbated by AI itself, and develop accompanying sociotechnical mitigations.
Develop novel applications of AI to bolster and enrich democratic processes.
Conduct rigorous sociotechnical studies on how information furnished by AI can support informed deliberation and debate.
Partner closely with researchers, policy and law experts, and other cross-functional teams across Anthropic to advance our safety mission.
Translate research insights into actionable recommendations for both product and policy.