Research Counsel, Data

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

Anthropic is seeking a Research Counsel focused on data to serve as the primary legal advisor on data acquisition, usage, and risk mitigation for our AI research and model development teams. As a member of the Research Counsel function, you will be a subject matter expert on copyright, privacy, and related issues pertaining to data used to develop frontier AI models. The ideal candidate will have experience navigating complex legal challenges at the intersection of machine learning, data acquisition, and content usage in a fast-moving technical environment.

Responsibilities:

• Advise various research teams on permissible data usage and partner with them on our data sourcing strategy. Translate data needs between research teams and legal/policy stakeholders.
• Maintain and evolve guidelines, policies, and controls around data acquisition and use to proactively address legal risks and regulatory requirements related to data.
• Monitor regulatory developments related to AI training data (e.g. EU AI Act) and adapt internal policies and practices proactively.
• Engage with academics, industry groups, and other stakeholders to develop norms and best practices around data governance for AI development.

You may be a good fit if you:

• Are a creative, practical problem solver with a passion and capacity for translating and applying legal requirements to technical concepts related to model development. You understand the importance of enabling innovation while developing responsibly and mitigating risks.  
• Have expertise in copyright, privacy, and related laws applicable to data used for machine learning.
• Have experience advising on legal issues for AI products or services and knowledge of the machine learning development lifecycle.
• Have excellent written communication skills, with the ability to draft clear policies, whitepapers, and other content. You enjoy engaging with stakeholders to evangelize best practices.
• Have experience operating in a fast-paced technology startup in which priorities shift rapidly and schedules “move to the left.” You thrive in this dynamic environment and pride yourself on your adaptability and ability to pivot with speed and grace.
• Understand how to achieve the right balance between the organization’s mission and goals, when to be flexible and when to draw a hard line.
• Have a knack for identifying and implementing efficient processes and policies.
• Thrive as a member of cross-functional teams building frontier technologies and want to develop a deep understanding of our technical teams and what we are building.
• Enjoy wearing many hats in a fast-growing startup environment and are comfortable operating outside your areas of expertise and in uncharted legal territory.
• Are a “doer” and are willing to roll up your sleeves to get things done. You’re a team player who doesn’t hesitate to jump in to solve difficult problems.

Strong candidates may also have:

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar (California preferred).
• 5-10 years of legal experience advising on copyright, privacy, data, and related issues for technology companies or AI/ML products (in-house experience preferred).
• Exceptional analytical skills, technical fluency, and ability to navigate ambiguous and uncharted legal territory.
• A thorough understanding of key legal issues in AI development, especially related to training data.
• A track record of educating internal stakeholders, translating complex concepts, and advising on risk mitigation strategies.
• Superior communication abilities, both written and verbal, with proven experience communicating and collaborating cross-functionally with technical teams.
• Be a motivated self-starter able to multi-task and juggle multiple priorities in a dynamic environment.
• A growth mindset, with a passion for AI's potential to positively impact the world and realistic assessment of its risks and limitations. Commitment to building trustworthy, ethical AI systems.
• Authentic integrity and a deep understanding of the importance of ethics in business.

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues.