Career Center

Call for a Moral-AI Postdoctoral Position at CMU and Duke

Hosts: Professors Hoda Heidari and Vincent Conitzer at CMU, and Jana Schaich Borg and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong at Duke

Description: We have an opening for a joint two-year postdoctoral position at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and the Social Science Research Institute and Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University (with the possibility of renewal for a third year).  The postdoc can be employed through any of these departments. The candidate is expected to live in either Pittsburgh or Durham depending on the home department but will be expected to travel occasionally to the other location.  

The postdoc will be jointly hosted by Professors Hoda Heidari and Vincent Conitzer at CMU, and Professors Jana Schaich Borg and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong at Duke. The focus of the position is on conducting impactful research on moral artificial intelligence. The postdoc will have the opportunity to engage with our partners at Stanford, Guelph, and Oxford, and address such problems as:

• Designing artificial intelligence systems to model and predict human moral judgments
• Designing effective elicitation mechanisms and interfaces to capture moral preferences
• Developing techniques for implementing and evaluating AI systems that are based on these modeled preferences, and assessing the dynamic impact of these systems on the preferences and behavior of users who interact with them

Applicants should hold a Ph.D. in computer science, statistics, mathematics, or related technical fields and have expertise in Machine Learning and AI / statistics / data science. Additional background in philosophy, (AI or other) ethics, HCI, and/or social science is preferred, but not required.  Interested applicants should contact the hosts via email, including a CV and statement of research interests, and the name of three referees that can provide letters of recommendation. We are strongly committed to a diverse academic environment and place high priority on attracting underrepresented candidates.

Carnegie Mellon University shall abide by the requirements of 41 CFR §§ 60-1.4(a), 60-300.5(a) and 60-741.5(a). These regulations prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals based on their status as protected veterans or individuals with disabilities, and prohibit discrimination against all individuals based on their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Moreover, these regulations require that covered prime contractors and subcontractors take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, protected veteran status or disability.

About Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 12,000 students in the university’s seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon’s main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California’s Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico.

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