Senior and specialist posts are being advertised at new DSIT body created to fulfil ‘mission to minimise surprise to the UK and humanity from rapid and unexpected advances in AI’

Government’s recently created AI Safety Institute is recruiting almost 30 positions, including technical experts and senior management.

Plans to create the new body – which government claims is the world’s “first state-backed organisation focused on advanced AI safety for the public interest” – were first unveiled in October. The process of establishing the institute is now well underway, with 28 jobs across 12 different roles currently being advertised. All but the one of the positions is open for applications until 11.55pm on Sunday 28 January, excepting a single policy advisor post which closes three days earlier.

Among the posts up for grabs is the chief information security officer brief, offering a salary of up to £135,000 and a remit to “forge key partnerships with top AI firms and national security agencies”.

Also being advertised is another senior post of to spearhead the unit’s work on “cutting-edge evaluations of cyberattack uplift from next-generation frontier AI models”. Another high-level post will sit at the head of AISI’s “loss of control evaluation”, which will focus on examining “frontier AI systems for risky autonomous capabilities”.

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These two roles will also potentially come a £135,000-a-year salary, as well the head of engineering post, who will be “introducing meaningful cultural and engineering principles that will contribute to the long-term success of AISI”.  Another high-level postholder “will spearhead the development of a strategy for analysing how well the safety and security components of frontier AI systems… stand up to diverse threats”.

Two new hires at AISI will constitute the institute’s international team, which will be charged with “shaping the global AI landscape in line with UK interests”.

Three software engineer posts are open for applications, as are eight research scientist and seven researcher engineer roles, and one each of the following positions: UX engineer and frontend developer.

In a statement announcing the openings and inviting candidates to apply, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – which will house AISI – said that the institute’s “mission is to minimise surprise to the UK and humanity from rapid and unexpected advances in AI”.

“It will work towards this by developing the sociotechnical infrastructure needed to understand the risks of advanced AI and enable its governance,” DSIT added. “This mission stems from our conviction that governments have a key role to play in providing publicly accountable evaluations of AI systems and supporting research. Governments will only be able to develop effective policy and regulatory responses to AI if they understand the technology better than they do today. By building a body of evidence on the risks from advanced AI, the institute will lay the foundations for technically grounded international governance.”