Anthropic Opens Applications for the Anthropic Residency, a Paid Fixed Term Safety Research Program With No ML Background Required
Applications are now open for the Anthropic Residency, a paid, fixed-term research program for academics, technical founders, and staff-level engineers who want to make AI safe and beneficial for everyone. No ML background is required. Apply by November 22:
Context
Opening paid safety research roles to academics, founders and engineers without ML backgrounds could widen the pool of people working on AI safety.
Anthropic has run fellowship style programs before to bring outside researchers into AI safety work. Many safety research roles have traditionally required machine learning experience. The Residency application deadline is Nov 22.
Deep dive
Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) posted on Nov 2 that applications are open for the Anthropic Residency. The post describes it as a paid, fixed term research program for academics, technical founders and staff level engineers who want to make AI safe and beneficial for everyone. It says no ML background is required, and the deadline to apply is November 22.
The post does not say how long the residency lasts, how many people will be accepted, how much it pays or which research areas residents will work on. Those details are on the linked application page rather than in the post.
The target groups are notable. By naming academics from other fields, founders and senior engineers, and by dropping an ML requirement, Anthropic is signaling that it sees safety work as needing skills beyond model training, such as security engineering, evaluation design, formal methods or policy analysis. It also reflects strong competition for talent, since the major labs are all trying to grow research teams quickly.
The announcement comes on a busy day for Anthropic, which also disclosed financial details in its S 1 filing and said it may soon reach its AI driven acceleration threshold, both covered higher in this deck. A residency program is small next to those stories, but it shows how the company is trying to build its safety research capacity as its models grow more capable.
What to expect next
Watch for the size of the first cohort and the projects residents take on, and for whether their work is published. If the program draws strong people from outside ML, other labs may copy the model. Applicants should note the November 22 deadline. Over time, its alumni could show up in safety teams across the industry and in government AI institutes.