Patrick Butlin
Projects in this stream will be on AI welfare and moral status; more specifically, on what it takes to be a moral patient and how we can determine whether AI systems meet the conditions. I'm looking for applicants who have ideas about these topics and are motivated to explore them in more detail.
Stream overview
(i) Eleos AI are launching a program to conduct empirical research on welfare-relevant properties of current AI. I am looking for scholars to conduct experiments as part of this program.
(ii) I am also willing to supervise philosophical research related to AI consciousness and welfare. This could be research in ethics, such as on conditions for moral patienthood, or in philosophy of mind/cognitive science on the nature of welfare-relevant properties and states, such as sentience and desire.
(iii) Other projects concerning AI welfare; if you have an idea for a project in this area, I will be glad to consider it.
Mentors
I am a philosopher of mind and a researcher at Eleos AI, where I work on AI consciousness, agency and welfare. Before joining Eleos, I worked at the Future of Humanity Institute and Global Priorities Institute in Oxford. I'm interested in projects including purely philosophical work on the grounds of moral status; research drawing on cognitive science to gain a mechanistic understanding of sentience and agency; and empirical studies that can shed light on welfare-relevant features in AI.
Mentorship style
By default, scholars will meet with me online for 1hr/week and I will respond to questions on email/slack.
Representative papers
Scholars we are looking for
Scholars should have the following characteristics:
- Motivation to work in this area and curiosity about the ideas
- Initiative and ability to work independently
- Excellent general intellectual and communication skills
- Strong background in a relevant area, such as ethics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science (especially topics such as consciousness science or human reinforcement learning), or experiments with LLMs
Can independently find collaborators, but not required
Project selection
I will talk through project ideas with scholar
Community at MATS
MATS Research phase provides scholars with a community of peers.
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During the Research phase, scholars work out of a shared office, have shared housing, and are supported by a full-time Community Manager.
Working in a community of independent researchers gives scholars easy access to future collaborators, a deeper understanding of other alignment agendas, and a social network in the alignment community.
Previous MATS cohorts included regular lightning talks, scholar-led study groups on mechanistic interpretability and linear algebra, and hackathons. Other impromptu office events included group-jailbreaking Bing chat and exchanging hundreds of anonymous compliment notes. Scholars organized social activities outside of work, including road trips to Yosemite, visits to San Francisco, and joining ACX meetups.