FULLY-FUNDED PHD STUDENTSHIP ON VALUE-ALIGNMENT

The Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC) is offering a fully-funded PhD studentship in Artificial Intelligence, focusing on the area of value alignment.

The position is offered in the context of VAE (short for Value-Awareness Engineering), a new Spanish project on value awareness. The project addresses the pressing issue of machines being aware of human values and active in ensuring the alignment of actions with such values. VAE brings together AI scientists from the IIIA-CSIC in Barcelona, the University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, and the Universitat Politècnica de València, as well as scientists studying ethics from the Institute of Public Policy & Goods (IPP) in Madrid.

At IIIA-CSIC, the main focus will be providing a formal framework for value specification, investigating the link between affect, values and norms and providing an in-depth study of how to define values taking into account considerations from “value theory”, which designates the area of moral philosophy that is concerned with theoretical questions about value and goodness of all varieties.

The candidates will be working with Prof Carles Sierra and Dr Nardine Osman, and will be part of a vibrant and interdisciplinary research team.

About IIIA-CSIC:
IIIA-CSIC, located on the UAB campus, belongs to the Spanish National Research Council, Spain’s largest public institution devoted to research and technological development. IIIA-CSIC is a leading research centre in Europe in the areas of multiagent systems, machine learning, and uncertainty reasoning. It has grown over the last 25 years to become a cohesive group of 60 researchers and engineers, including roughly 20 PhD students. Many of its near 100 alumni hold relevant research and industrial positions all over the world, in Australia, the US, France, the UK, Singapore, Italy, and Argentina to name a few. IIIA-CSIC has a strong academic record, and is an active player in the Catalan industrial ecosystem, participating in a large number of technology transfer projects.

Responsibilities:

• Developing foundational research for moral cognition.
• Creating formal models for the specification of values and their meaning.
• Building tools to enable reasoning about values, norms, and value-alignment.

Requirements:

• An MSc in computer science, artificial intelligence, (technical) cognitive science, mathematics, physics, or areas relevant to the research topic.
• Knowledge and expertise in formal methods and mathematics is highly valued.
• Good programming skills are required (Python or other).
• Very good English language skills (spoken as well as written).
• As the team is interdisciplinary, interest or understanding in themes related to social values is desirable.

Salary: around € 22,000 a year
Duration: 3 years (extendable)
Workday: –
Workplace: IIIA-CSIC
Start date: tentative start date is 01 January 2023
Closing date: 05/OCT/2022

Applicants should send their application by email to Dr Nardine Osman (nardine@iiia.csic.es) with the subject “VAE PhD application”. The application should include (in PDF):

• a short statement of interest explaining why the applicant is interested in this position, how does their profile match the research, along with any other relevant information;
• a full curriculum vitae;
• two reference letters;
• a copy of the applicant’s academic degrees/transcripts; and
• any relevant scientific publications, if applicable.

Applications will be considered on an ongoing basis, though the deadline is on 05 October 2022. Selected candidates will be invited for an interview, which can be online if necessary.

For further information please contact Prof Carles Sierra (sierra@iiia.csic.es) or Dr Nardine Osman (nardine@iiia.csic.es).