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Become a facilitator

We are looking for facilitators for future runs of the Research Fellowship. Facilitators give accountability to fellows to help them produce a high-quality piece of conceptual or technical work for the Mercial blog.

What a facilitator does

You'll check in with your fellows regularly throughout the month to provide accountability and guidance, and to steer the project towards a finished write-up. Fellows are expected to be agentic and take the initiative on their own work, so you are not supervising it day to day — you are a sounding board, someone to sanity-check a research direction, and a reason to have something to show each week. You are not necessarily in a mentoring role, so you don’t need to be an expert on your project, but you should have a general idea of how fellows should approach it. Fellows will lead their projects, and you will help keep everyone on track. Our idea for this is that mentors are a bottleneck for a lot of research programs, and a program that enables research with facilitators instead will have more room to expand.

What we ask of you

Capacity

One to two hours per week, for the month the fellowship runs. The fellowship is remote, so your location doesn't matter.

Experience

Some experience producing well-argued work within AI safety. We look for at least one concrete example: an in-depth project, a well-made LessWrong post, or previous research experience. You don't need to be an expert in your domain: you just need to be able to sanity-check fellows.

Problems

You choose what your fellows work on. Bring your own problems, or pick from our list of suggested problems.

You do not need to be a researcher by trade. Full details of the role are in the facilitator brief.

Applications

Apply to be a facilitator Ask a question first

Not what you were after?

If you would rather take part as a fellow, applications for the October cohort have closed, but you can see its facilitators and problems and watch the newsletter for the next round. For the technical bootcamp, see Get Involved — those applications are not open yet, but the newsletter will carry the dates.