Has MIRI considered hiring a more senior math-Ph.D., to serve in a “postdoc supervisor”-type role?
We considered it, but decided against it because supervision doesn’t seem like a key bottleneck on our research progress. Our priority is just to find people who have the right kinds of math/CS intuitions to formalize the mostly-informal problems we’re working on, and I haven’t found that this correlates with seniority. That said, I’m happy to hire senior mathematicians if we find ones who want to work with us and have the relevant skills.
One thing that is currently a key bottleneck for us is technical writing capability—if you are interested in MIRI’s research and you’re good at technical exposition, let us know.
A question from Topher Halquist, on facebook:
We considered it, but decided against it because supervision doesn’t seem like a key bottleneck on our research progress. Our priority is just to find people who have the right kinds of math/CS intuitions to formalize the mostly-informal problems we’re working on, and I haven’t found that this correlates with seniority. That said, I’m happy to hire senior mathematicians if we find ones who want to work with us and have the relevant skills.
One thing that is currently a key bottleneck for us is technical writing capability—if you are interested in MIRI’s research and you’re good at technical exposition, let us know.