2 Research Fellowships in Philosophy or Ethics of AI (EXPIRED)

The University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU, est. 1742) has been awarded a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (Prof. Vincent C. Müller) and is setting up a new Centre for Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence Research (PAIR) within a new department of Science and Technology Studies (STS). At PAIR, we are looking for two post-doctoral research fellows on a 3-year contract (with the possibility of extension).

One of the fellows is funded by the Humboldt Professorship and will work in any area relevant to PAIR, the other is funded by a project with the Germany Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and will work on AI ethics.

Research Environment & Tasks

With long-term funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship and other projects, we are building the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) to be one of the internationally leading institutions in the ethics of AI and philosophy of AI. We aim to have deep impact on normative and theoretical issues in both AI and philosophy. The initial team at PAIR will be 3 research fellows, 1 visiting fellow, 4 PhD students, 1 manager, 1 secretary and 1 professor. We are planning to grow with additional funding and a perspective for permanent contracts. We offer a stimulating, supportive and pleasant research environment - situated in a high-grade centrally-located office environment in beautiful Erlangen. The working language at PAIR is English.

What matters to us is your contribution to intellectual progress in research, plus contributions to the team overall (publications, funding, visibility, cooperation, ...). Academic excellence is assumed, as are teamwork, an international outlook and fluent English (for the BMBF project, some knowledge of German would be an advantage.). The position involves co-supervision of PhD candidates at the Centre and possibly contributions to classroom teaching (jointly not more than 20% FTE). Research fellows are expected to be mostly working on-site.

Benefits

Salary at level TV-L E13, full-time (currently ca. €50-73000/year, before tax). The employment includes social security benefits, health insurance (1/2 employer, 1/2 employee), pension, sick pay, etc. Sufficient funds for technical equipment, travel, events, etc. are available from PAIR.

Requirements

PhD in a relevant field, by the time of appointment.

We do not require that applicants already have a visa & work permit for the EU/Germany.

Everyone deserves to feel at home at our university. The PAIR Centre encourages applications out of groups that are currently underrepresented in philosophy. We aim to have team members with a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives.

Procedure

Applications via e-mail to [email protected] with a single PDF that includes: cover letter including research plans (1-2 pages), CV, one publication/text.

We will run a single application procedure for both posts. This will involve speaking to a long-list of candidates over video-link, and then invite a short-list of candidates to the PAIR Centre. Starting dates can be negotiated, but sooner ist preferred.