Open Phil AI Fellowship

San Francisco, CA

https://coefficientgiving.org/ai-fellowship/

winding-downFounded 2018

The Open Phil AI Fellowship supports full-time PhD students in artificial intelligence and machine learning who are interested in research that makes it less likely that advanced AI systems pose a global catastrophic risk. Fellows receive a $40,000 annual stipend, $10,000 in annual research support, and full tuition and fee coverage through the fifth year of their PhD. The program ran annual classes from 2018 through 2022, funding a total of 41 researchers across five cohorts, and is currently on pause with no new applications being accepted.

Funding Details

Annual Budget: -
Monthly Burn Rate: -
Current Runway: -
Funding Goal: -
Funding Raised to Date: $8,900,000
Fiscal Sponsor: Open Philanthropy

Theory of Change

The fellowship aims to reduce catastrophic AI risk by investing in early-career researchers at a critical moment in their development. By funding PhD students who are interested in AI safety topics such as alignment, interpretability, and reliability, the program seeks to grow the talent pipeline for AI safety research. The underlying assumption is that the AI safety field faces a severe talent bottleneck relative to the pace of AI development, and that identifying and supporting the most promising researchers early will lead to more and better safety-relevant work over the long term. Fellows joining the field contribute directly through their research and indirectly by building a community of safety-oriented AI researchers.