Basis

About Basis

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

The first is to understand and build intelligence. This means to establish the mathematical principles of what it means to reason, to learn, to make decisions, to understand, and to explain; and to construct software that implements these principles.

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

To achieve these goals, we’re building both a new technological foundation that draws inspiration from how humans reason, and a new kind of collaborative organization that puts human values first.

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 high-quality scientific research. 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

Activities

• 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

• 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: Working hours will be mostly flexible — you will work towards outcomes. There are certain fixed times during the week when you will be expected to be available to attend meetings. There will also be in-person events spanning several days that you will attend. 
• Location: This is an in-person position in either the New York City or Boston/Cambridge area.
• Salary: $100,000 annually
• Application close date: 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.