Are you interested in doing a PhD or Masters on something altruistic?
The MIT Media Lab has a new
fellowship funded by the
FTX
Future Fund for "ambitiously benevolent projects that could not be
accomplished anywhere else". They give some examples:
creating works that expand our moral circle,
designing to cultivate wisdom,
developing new technologies to promote or safeguard wellbeing, or
directly improving the lives of current beings in ways
anticipated to benefit future generations
If you're interested you would apply for admission to the MIT Media
Lab for Fall 2023 (details) and
also to the fellowship (details),
deadline 2022-12-01. If accepted to both, the fellowship would cover
your tuition and health insurance, pay you a stipend (~$45k/y),
and cover $25k/y in additional research costs.
While the application requires you to say which research groups you're
interested in joining, what it doesn't make clear is that this is,
unusually for the US, a direct-admission system: each faculty member
chooses individually who they would like to admit. This means
it's definitely worth reaching out specifically to someone whose group
you're interested in joining (though they may not respond—they
get tons of email) and also thinking carefully about how your research
interests intersect.
Unlike many programs, you can work on a very wide range
of things: art, science, engineering, law, governance, economics, etc,
and research that would be hard to do in a more traditional graduate
program is especially welcome. If you have questions about what the
Media Lab is like I'm happy to try to answer, though I've only been
here a few months.
(Disclosure: I work
at the NAO which is part
of Kevin Esvelt's Sculpting Evolution
group at the Media Lab, and Kevin asked if I might want to write
something about this opportunity.)
Are you interested in doing a PhD or Masters on something altruistic? The MIT Media Lab has a new fellowship funded by the FTX Future Fund for "ambitiously benevolent projects that could not be accomplished anywhere else". They give some examples:
If you're interested you would apply for admission to the MIT Media Lab for Fall 2023 (details) and also to the fellowship (details), deadline 2022-12-01. If accepted to both, the fellowship would cover your tuition and health insurance, pay you a stipend (~$45k/y), and cover $25k/y in additional research costs.
While the application requires you to say which research groups you're interested in joining, what it doesn't make clear is that this is, unusually for the US, a direct-admission system: each faculty member chooses individually who they would like to admit. This means it's definitely worth reaching out specifically to someone whose group you're interested in joining (though they may not respond—they get tons of email) and also thinking carefully about how your research interests intersect.
Unlike many programs, you can work on a very wide range of things: art, science, engineering, law, governance, economics, etc, and research that would be hard to do in a more traditional graduate program is especially welcome. If you have questions about what the Media Lab is like I'm happy to try to answer, though I've only been here a few months.
(Disclosure: I work at the NAO which is part of Kevin Esvelt's Sculpting Evolution group at the Media Lab, and Kevin asked if I might want to write something about this opportunity.)