Research Intern 2025

About Basis

Basis is a nonprofit applied AI research organization with two mutually reinforcing goals.

The first is to understand and build intelligence. This entails establishing the mathematical principles of reasoning, learning, decision-making, understanding, and explaining, and constructing software that embodies these principles.

The second is to advance society’s ability to solve intractable problems. This involves expanding the scale, complexity, and breadth of problems we can solve today and, more importantly, accelerating our ability to solve problems in the future.

To achieve these goals, we are building both a new technological foundation inspired by human reasoning, and a new type of collaborative organization that prioritizes human value.

About the Role

Research interns work closely with scientists and engineers at Basis, both learning from and contributing to our team. Internships are open to graduate-level candidates (or equivalent), pursuing research in technical and scientific domains, including areas of computer science, such as machine learning, and programming languages.

We are looking for people who want to grow technically, and who value gaining a deeper understanding of concepts at their foundations.

We expect you to:

• Have demonstrated an ability to do scientific research that is of high-quality. Possible ways to demonstrate this include publications, technical reports, and software projects.

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

• Excited about solving real world problems and having positive societal impact.

Responsibilities

• Develop and explore computational theories of intelligence, including reasoning, learning, and decision-making.
• In close collaboration with domain experts inside and especially outside Basis, work as a team member to help solve scientific and societal problems
• Distill insights from solving problems into more general mathematical and computational theories
• Contribute to open-source software
• (Optionally) Publish and present findings in journals and conferences
• Contribute to the culture and direction of Basis

Role Details

Exceptional candidates who may not meet all of the following criteria are still encouraged to apply.

• FT/PT: This is a full-time position.
• Start and end dates: This is typically a summer position but the dates are flexible. The internship should span at least three months.
• Hours: While we prioritize in-person collaboration for its benefits to creative work, there is a degree of flexibility in your working hours. Expect to be available during certain set times each week for meetings, and be prepared to attend multi-day Basis-wide in-person events.
• Location: This is an in-person position in either the New York City or Boston/Cambridge area.
• Salary: $100,000 annually
• Application close: (Update 9/9/24) We will begin reviewing applications for Summer 2025 in November, and the application will remain open until the cohort is full. If you wish to be evaluated sooner for an earlier start date (Winter/Spring 2025), please be sure to check the Winter/Spring option under Preferred Dates. Note, due to high volume and low demand for off-cycle interns, we cannot guarantee a response.