Announcing: 2026 MIRI Technical Governance Team Research Fellowship.

MIRI’s Technical Governance Team plans to run a small research fellowship program in early 2026. The program will run for 8 weeks, and include a $1200/week stipend. Fellows are expected to work on their projects 40 hours per week. The program is remote-by-default, with an in-person kickoff week in Berkeley, CA (flights and housing provided). Participants who already live in or near Berkeley are free to use our office for the duration of the program.

Fellows will spend the first week picking out scoped projects from a list provided by our team or designing independent research projects (related to our overall agenda), and then spend seven weeks working on that project under the guidance of our Technical Governance Team. One of the main goals of the program is to identify full-time hires for the team.

If you are interested in participating, please fill out this application as soon as possible (should take 45-60 minutes). We plan to set dates for participation based on applicant availability, but we expect the fellowship to begin after February 2, 2026 and end before August 31, 2026 (i.e., some 8 week period in spring/summer, 2026).

Strong applicants care deeply about existential risk, have existing experience in research or policy work, and are able to work autonomously for long stretches on topics that merge considerations from the technical and political worlds.

Unfortunately, we are not able to sponsor visas for this program.

See here for examples of potential projects

Could/should big EA-ish coworking spaces like Constellation pay to have far-UV installed? (either on their floors specifically or for the whole building)

MATS has a very high bar these days, I'm pretty happy about there being "knock-off MATS" programs that allow people who missed the bar for MATS to demonstrate they can do valuable work. 

I still kinda feel this way about Asterisk (my opinion would change if I learned that the readership wasn't just EAs)

I made an AI generated podcast of the 2021 MIRI Conversations. There are different voices for the different participants, to make it easier and more natural to follow along with. 

This was done entirely in my personal capacity, and not as part of my job at MIRI. I did this because I like listening to audio and there wasn’t a good audio version of the conversations. 

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/6I0YbfFQJUv0IX6EYD1tPe

RRS: https://anchor.fm/s/1082f3c7c/podcast/rss

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2021-miri-conversations/id1838863198 

Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/biravt3t 

AI Generated Podcast for 2021 MIRI Conversations. 

I made an AI generated podcast of the 2021 MIRI Conversations. There are different voices for the different participants, to make it easier and more natural to follow along with. 

This was done entirely in my personal capacity, and not as part of my job at MIRI.^[1] I did this because I like listening to audio and there wasn’t a good audio version of the conversations. 

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/6I0YbfFQJUv0IX6EYD1tPe

RRS: https://anchor.fm/s/1082f3c7c/podcast/rss

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2021-miri-conversations/id1838863198 

Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/biravt3t 

1. ^{^}

   I do think you probably should (pre-)order If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies though. 

Thanks for your comment :) sorry you finding all the book posts annoying, I decided to post here after seeing that there hadn’t been a post on the EA Forum 

I’m not actually sure what book content I’m allowed to talk about publicly before the launch. Overall the book is written much more for an audience who are new to the AI x-risk arguments (e.g., policymakers and the general public), and it is less focused on providing new arguments to people who have been thinking/reading about this for years (although I do think they’ll find it an enjoyable and clarifying read). I don’t think it's trying to go 15 arguments deep in a LessWrong argument chain. That said, I think there is new stuff in there; the arguments are clearer than previously, there are novel framings on things, and I would guess that there’s at least some things in there that you would find new. I don’t know if I would expect people from the “Pope, Belrose, Turner, Barnett, Thornley, 1a3orn” crowd to be convinced, but they might appreciate the new framings. There will also be related online resources, which I think will cover more of the argument tree, although again, I don’t know how convincing this will be to people who are already in deep. 

Here’s what Nate said in the LW announcement post:

If you're a LessWrong regular, you might wonder whether the book contains anything new for you personally. The content won’t come as a shock to folks who have read or listened to a bunch of what Eliezer and I have to say, but it nevertheless contains some new articulations of our arguments, that I think are better articulations than we’ve ever managed before.

I would guess many people from the OpenPhil/Constellation cluster would give endorsements as the book being a good distillation. But insofar as it's moving the frontier of online arguments about AI x-risk forward, it will mainly be by saying arguments more clearly (which imo is still progress). 

I have a bunch of disagreements with Good Ventures and how they are allocating their funds, but also Dustin and Cari are plausibly the best people who ever lived. 

AGI by 2028 is more likely than not

Look at the resolution criteria which is based on the specific metaculus Q, seems like a very low bar

I didn't read the post, so this isn't feedback. I just wanted to share my related take that I only want feedback if it's positive, and otherwise people should keep their moronic opinions to themselves.