TLDR: We're building a high-impact internship board aimed at helping undergraduate EAs build skills in relevant fields. We’re using internship here as a catchall term to include anything that might occur over the summer (aimed at undergraduates). This can include bootcamps, fellowships, research programs, volunteer roles, or other similar opportunities. 

Please submit any relevant internships or opportunities for undergraduates (both at EA and non-EA orgs) here. 

[Note: We expect our website to be up in two weeks.]

Overview of Project

• Our project consists of two main parts:
  • 1. Building a database of EA internships (and related opportunities) and publishing it as a resource for groups.
  • 2. Providing a funding opportunity (for otherwise unpaid or perhaps non-existent) high-impact internships and research positions (tentative: funding not yet secured)
• EA Internship Database
  • This upcoming database will primarily feature EA-related internships. We will also include other opportunities we would like younger EAs to be aware of, such as bootcamps, funding opportunities, summer schools, volunteer roles, conferences, and awards.
  • We plan to publish our website, which is currently under development, in late December.
  • This database will be divided by cause area, including but not limited to: AI Safety, AI Policy/Governance, Biosecurity, Animal Welfare & Alternative Proteins, Global Health & Development, Institutional Decision Making, Meta EA (journalism, EA marketing, EA entrepreneurship, personal assistants, campus specialists, etc).
• Opportunity for funding
  • If an internship on the database is unpaid, individuals can apply through us to get funding for it. Funding has not yet been procured will depend on the applicant’s abilities and the cause area that the internship is in (as different cause areas have different limits for funding)
  • The criteria for funding will vary by cause area. For example, it is not required for someone interning at an alternative protein startup to be integrated into the EA community, but that may be necessary for an AI policy applicant.

Why this may be valuable: 

• EAs at undergraduate universities lack a centralized place to find high-impact internships and job/research opportunities that allow them to build skills in relevant fields.
• While 80,000 Hours’ job board is great, it’s not optimized for undergraduates and the internships featured aren’t very accessible (e.g. the majority of internships require degrees and/or multiple years of prior work experience). Our board will also feature bootcamps, fellowships, and other summer programming aimed at undergraduates. We’ve spoken with Niel Bowerman at 80k who approves of this project.
• It normally falls on university group organizers to share resources and internship opportunities to their group. Many opportunities are shared across Slack channels and informal networks, making it easy for a group organizer to miss seeing an opportunity that could be a great fit for someone in their group.
• There are likely substantial time costs from having each EA group organizer individually share and look for resources that could otherwise easily be aggregated.
• Anecdotally, university group organizers hear from group members that they wish they had more concrete opportunities to either directly work at an EA org or apply what they’re learned in fellowships to their internships.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Michel Justen, Lenni Justen, Emma Dolan, Adam Krivka, Patricio Ortiz, Sanat Singhal, Danya Adib, and Mason Zhang for their help with this project.