AI Industry Associate/Lead

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is hiring an AI Industry Associate/Lead to develop a vision for a pro-human path for AI development, framed around controllable, verifiable, human-centered AI tools, as opposed to the development and adoption of maximally autonomous general AI systems. The AI Industry Associate/Lead will engage with policy makers on how AI innovation and safety regulation can go hand in hand.

We are open to hiring a range of seniorities for this role. Exact title and scope will reflect the successful candidate's experience.

This role will report to our Head of European Policy and Research.

Who we are

FLI educates and engages lawmakers, key stakeholders, and the general public about transformative technologies and their implications. We advocate for policies and approaches that mitigate catastrophic risks while advancing positive futures for humanity.

Humanity stands at a fork in the road with AI. One path races to replace humans as creators, caregivers, decision-makers, and workers—threatening our economy, security, civil liberties, democracy, and the human experience. But a better path exists: trustworthy, controllable AI tools that amplify human capability, strengthen institutions, and help us solve problems we cannot solve alone.

This role will focus on developing and advocating a credible strategy for AI that does not depend on building maximally general, autonomous systems to replace humans wholesale. Instead, we can build an economically powerful alternative rooted in reliable, verifiable, controllable, human-directed, and purpose-driven AI.

As AI Industry Associate/Lead, you will::

• Strategy development (as Lead): Develop a rigorous argument that a credible AI strategy need not depend on building or adopting maximally general, autonomous AI systems.

• Tracking industry developments: Monitor and support non-hyperscaling technical paths. This includes the development of efficient/smaller models, open-source and open-science AI, physical AI/robotics, and high-value industrial and scientific data applications.

• Engage stakeholders and build coalitions: Interface with policymakers interested in exploring sovereign AI strategies including Brazil, Canada, EU Member States and its AI Office in Brussels.

• Translate strategy into concrete asks: Produce policy-ready recommendations for policymakers.

Required qualifications::

• Experienced technology strategist, ideally in AI policy. This could be within industry, at a start up, or within the policy space.

• Sufficient technical fluency in advanced AI — capabilities trajectories, agentic systems, evaluation and verification methods — to engage credibly with technical experts and to hold a position against the prevailing scaling consensus.

• Experience engaging policymakers outside of the US and China, or a demonstrated capacity to do so.

Required skills and qualities::

• Excellent written and spoken communication, able to produce policy-ready analysis and to represent FLI in expert and/or high-level settings.

• Proven experience translating technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

• Stakeholder management and partnership building skills, ideally across institutions, industry and international partners.

• Independence and initiative — comfortable owning a strategy line and moving quickly in a fast-changing field.

• Alignment with FLI's mission of mitigating catastrophic risk while advancing positive futures.

Preferred qualifications, skills and qualities::

• A graduate degree in a relevant field — economics, computer science, or a technical AI discipline.

• Previous experience at a tech start up, or similar experience of how things get done in the technology industry.

• Background in, or close knowledge of, a safety-sensitive industrial sector where reliability is a hard operational requirement rather than a preference.

• An existing network among frontier AI researchers and relevant policymakers.