Why apply or share?

• Our work to understand progress in computing and artificial intelligence, and its implications, is highly relevant to understanding and mitigating the risks of AI. This write-up provides a good overview of some of our interests and areas of focus.
• We are one of Open Philanthropy's 10 largest Global Catastrophic Risk, and AI Governance grantees. 

‍Position Overview 

FutureTech is in search of a Product and Data Visualization Designer to own the design and visual communication of our research. The person in this role will be the creative force behind how our research is experienced and understood globally. They will help us articulate complex data and insights through UI and UX that are both intuitive and engaging, and maintain a cohesive visual identity across all of FutureTech's communication channels, including our websites, interactive dashboards, and data visualizations. This work will be vital for enhancing our dialogue with the research community and stakeholders. The successful candidate will report to Neil Thompson, and work closely with our operations, software engineering and research teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Maintaining and updating the design of our website.
• Designing graphs and visualizations for our interactive reports, papers and presentations, to ensure we are communicating our research effectively.
• Designing and reviewing interactive dashboards to summarize our research.
• Designing and reviewing playgrounds for interactive models of AI and automation.
• Designing various other external-facing documents and templates, such as our newsletter or reports for stakeholders.
• Conducting user research and interviews with our stakeholders on design elements.
• Depending on your interests and skills, you could get involved in other aspects of our communications, such as homogenizing the structure and style of our papers, among others.

What We Are Looking For:

Requirements:

• At least 3 years of UI and UX experience, incl. web design, graphic design, and brand design
• At least 1 year of data visualization experience, incl. creating charts and data visualizations for publications, marketing, and UI dashboards
• Portfolio showcasing work in UI/UX and data visualization
• Aesthetic intuition to create visually appealing and effective designs
• Skill in communicating complex insights to non-expert audiences.
• Experience in Figma or a similar UI software
• Intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness
• Interest in FutureTech’s work
• Front-end development experience in HTML + CSS + JS.

Desired:

• 4 or more years of UI and UX experience.
• 2 or more years of data visualization experience.
• Familiarity with FutureTech’s research or related topics.
• Experience with scientific communication.
• Experience with Pyplot, Plotlib or other data visualization programming tools.
• Good written communication skills.
• Experience with Webflow, our current website platform.

Location 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA is preferred, but remote/hybrid is also possible.

Salary

$50,000 - $90,000 depending on experience (to be confirmed by MIT HR).

About MIT FutureTech

MIT FutureTech is an interdisciplinary group of computer scientists, engineers, and economists at MIT who study the foundations of progress in computing and Artificial Intelligence: the trends, implications, opportunities, and risks.  

Economic and social change is underpinned by advances in computing: for instance, improvements in the miniaturization of integrated circuits, the discovery, and refinement of algorithms, and the development and diffusion of better software systems and processes. We aim to identify and understand the trends in computing that create opportunities or risks and help leaders in computing, scientific funding bodies, and government to respond appropriately.

Our research helps to answer important questions including: Will AI progress accelerate or decline – and should it? What are the bottlenecks to growth from AI, and how might they be solved? What are the risks from AI, and how can we mitigate them?

To support our research, we run seminars and conferences to better connect the field of computer scientists, economists, and innovation scholars to build a thriving global research community. 

We advise governments, nonprofits and industry, including via National Academies panels on transformational technologies and scientific reliability, the Council on Competitiveness’ National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers, and the National Science Foundation’s National Network for Critical Technology Assessment.

Our work has been funded by Open Philanthropy, the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, the MIT-Air Force AI accelerator, and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and widely cited, including by the 2024 Economic Report of the President.

Some of our recent outputs:  

• Economic impacts of AI-augmented R&D
• The AI Risk Repository: A Comprehensive Meta-Review, Database, and Taxonomy of Risks from Artificial Intelligence 
• Algorithmic progress in language models 
• Beyond AI Exposure: Which Tasks are Cost-Effective to Automate with Computer Vision? 
• Explosive growth from AI automation: A review of the arguments 
• How industry is dominating AI research   
• The Quantum Tortoise and the Classical Hare: A simple framework for understanding which problems quantum computing will accelerate (and which it will not)  
• There’s plenty of room at the Top: What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law?   
• Deep Learning's Diminishing Returns: The Cost of Improvement is Becoming Unsustainable  
• America’s lead in advanced computing is almost gone  

Some recent articles about our research: 

• Techcrunch: MIT researchers release a repository of AI risks
• CNN: AI and the labor market: MIT study findings
• TIME: AI job replacement fears and the MIT study
• Boston Globe: AI's impact on jobs according to MIT 

You will be working with Dr. Neil Thompson, the Director of MIT FutureTech. Prior to starting FutureTech, Dr. Thompson was a professor of Innovation and Strategy at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  His PhD is in Business & Public Policy from Berkeley.  He also holds Master’s degrees in: Computer Science (Berkeley), Economics (London School of Economics), and Statistics (Berkeley).  Prior to joining academia, Dr. Thompson was a management consultant with Bain & Company, and worked for the Canadian Government and the United Nations. 

About the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) 

CSAIL is one of the world’s top research centers for computer science and artificial intelligence (currently ranked #1).  It has hosted 9 Turing awards winners (the “Nobel Prize of Computing”) and has pioneered many of the technologies that underpin computing.

How to apply

Please use this form to register interest in this role or to submit a general expression of interest.

Selected candidates will be first interviewed via Zoom. We are recruiting on a rolling basis and may close applications early if we find a suitable candidate, so please apply as soon as possible to maximize your chances.