Anthropic and OpenAI place job ads for chemical weapons experts (must have five years experience)
While AI firms regularly warn of the existential threats the technology poses to humanity, they appear to do little to slow down progress. For now, the answer appears to be hiring an expert, with LLM makers on the lookout for chemical and biological weapons experts.
Anthropic – which makes popular enterprise LLM Claude – is offering between $245,000 and $285,000 for the hybrid position of “Policy Manager, Chemical Weapons and High Yield Explosives.”
The job description – which was posted about a week ago – states that the successful candidate would be expected to spend 25% of their time at one of the AI maker’s offices and work with leading safety researchers “while tackling critical problems in preventing catastrophic misuse.”
The position is deemed fit if applicants have “5+ years of experience in chemical weapons,” while nice-to-haves are listed as “experience with high yield explosives defense” and knowledge of dirty bombs.
OpenAI looking for “biological and chemical” red teamer
Anthropic is not the only LLM maker out there to hire in this area. ChatGPT’s preparedness team in San Francisco is looking for a Frontier Biological and Chemical Risks researcher.
With a salary of up to $455,000 (£335,000), the Sam Altman-led company is offering double that offered by Anthropic and is calling for candidates who can demonstrate their ability to “operate effectively in a dynamic and extremely fast-paced research environment.”
The job description makes it clear that the role would suit those working on the offensive side of security and those who “demonstrate the ability to think outside the box and have a robust red-teaming mindset.”
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Meanwhile, Anthropic is taking legal action against the US Department of War, which has designated it a supply chain risk after it insisted that its systems could not be used for either fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman quickly offered to fill the position and is also exploring a deal with NATO, despite backlash from his own employees.
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