AI Safety Research Scientist — ML Theory & Experiments

AIXI Labs; Bromley; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

AIXI Labs is a small, London-based non-profit doing AI safety research grounded in algorithmic information theory. You’d join a three-person core team—Cole Wyeth (Founder & Executive Director), Marcus Hutter (Research Director), and Aram Ebtekar (Founding Research Scientist)—at an early stage.

You’d help build our empirical research capability essentially from scratch. Minimum qualifications focus on a strong mathematical background and the ability to design and run experiments with modern

Qualifications

• Mathematical background to rapidly upskill on algorithmic information theory, AIXI, Bayesian statistics, and reinforcement learning theory.
• Proven ability to independently design, build, and run experiments with modern LLM-based agents.
• Ability to identify a worthwhile question, and drive it to a concrete result with minimal oversight.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Willingness to work as one of a very small core team, owning problems end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Design and run experiments on LLM-based agents that test theoretically-predicted risk factors for loss of control under realistic conditions.
• Build and evaluate safety mitigations motivated by our theoretical work, and report honestly on where they hold up and where they don’t.
• Directly help shape the research agenda — with a team this size, your judgment about which experiments are worth running will materially affect what we work on.
• Contribute to papers, blog posts, or other written output that communicates results to the broader AI safety and ML research communities.

Skills

Bayesian statistics

Reinforcement learning theory

Algorithmic information theory

Experiment design

LLM-based agents

Independent problem solving

Education

PhD in CS or Physics

Job description

AIXI Labs is a small, London-based non-profit doing AI safety research grounded in algorithmic information theory. You’d join a three-person core team—Cole Wyeth (Founder & Executive Director), Marcus Hutter (Research Director), and Aram Ebtekar (Founding Research Scientist)—at an early stage.

You’d help build our empirical research capability essentially from scratch. Minimum qualifications focus on a strong mathematical background and the ability to design and run experiments with modern