Human-Centered AI Research Intern, Causal Reasoning Models

Tri; Los Altos (CA); Hybrid; USD 62,000 - 90,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Paid Time Off

Job summary

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) invites a highly motivated PhD research intern to join the Adaptive Behavior Systems team within Human-Centered AI Division. You will explore causal reasoning in language models, collaborating with ML researchers and social scientists to test and improve methods and prepare publications.

The role emphasizes ownership from inception to validation, cross-functional collaboration, and strategy discussions on business impact at TRI.

Qualifications

• PhD student in AI/ML, computer science, data science, statistics or related field.
• Publication record or demonstrated research in causal inference.
• Hands-on experience with LLM evaluation/benchmarking, mechanistic interpretability, prompting and prompt optimization.
• Experience with Python and DL frameworks like PyTorch.
• Interest in human-centered research including qualitative/quantitative methods.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills.

Responsibilities

• Perform research and publish in a relevant venue; target NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and more.
• Take ownership of the project from inception to validation of methods.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with researchers across fields to leverage generative AI for understanding human behavior.

Skills

Python programming

DL frameworks

Excellent communication

Teamwork

Human-centered research interest

Education

PhD student in AI/ML/CS/DS/Statistics

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences.

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team in Human-Centered AI, Large Behavior Models, Robotics, Automated Driving, Energy & Materials and Human Interactive Driving.

This is a paid 12-week internship opportunity and is a hybrid, in-office role.

This is a Winter 2027 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role.

The Team

This internship opportunity falls within the Adaptive Behavior Systems team of Human-Centered AI Division (HCAI). We are an integrated team of ML researchers and social and behavior scientists. At the core of our work, we aim to enable decisions through human-centered AI that advance collective well-being for people and the planet.

The Internship

We are seeking a highly motivated and talented PhD research intern to join our adaptive behavior systems team to push the boundaries of causal reasoning in LLMs. The intern will collaborate with our interdisciplinary team of machine learning, behavioral, and social scientists to study how well language-based generative machine learning models can reason causally and to develop methods for testing and improving causal reasoning. The project will be focused on researching in a specific sub-area of the overall goal, towards publication in a top-tier venue. The intern will further engage in strategy discussions about how the research connects to business impact at Toyota.

• Perform research and publish in a relevant venue. Publication target venues include NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CLeaR, UAI, and COLM, with ACL or EMNLP where the contribution is primarily linguistic, and TMLR as a journal option. Findings may also be presented at ACIC or EuroCIM. The exact topic is to be finalized with the mentor.
• Take ownership of the project from project inception and ideation to validation of the developed methods.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with researchers in multiple fields to research and develop technology that leverages generative AI to understand human behavior.

• Ph.D. student in related fields - AI/ML, computer science, data science, statistics, or related field.
• Publication record or demonstrated research experience in causal inference (structural causal models, identification, counterfactual reasoning).
• Hands-on experience with one or more of: LLM evaluation and benchmarking; mechanistic interpretability; and methods for improving LLM reasoning, including prompting and prompt optimization, post-training (supervised fine-tuning or reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards), pretraining, or architectural changes.
• Experience with Python programming and DL frameworks like Pytorch.
• Interest in human-centered research (e.g. behavioral science, computational social science), including qualitative and/or quantitative methods such as experiments and user studies.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills.

the pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $45 and $65/hour for California-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's experience, skills, job-related knowledge, and market location. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time). Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

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