Senior Research Associate/Research Fellow (1-Year Contract), YPHSL - Part-Time

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Singapore Management University is a place where high-level professionalism blends together with a healthy informality. The 'family-like' atmosphere among the SMU community fosters a culture where employees work, plan, organise and play together building a strong collegiality and morale within the university.

Our commitment to attract and retain talent is ongoing. We offer attractive benefits and welfare, competitive compensation packages, and generous professional development opportunities all to meet the work-life needs of our staff. No wonder, then, that SMU continues to be given numerous awards and recognition for its human resource excellence.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Research Work

While a reasonably coherent set of desiderata are emerging around the attributes of AI systems deployed in sensitive contexts such as public service delivery or the management of public infrastructure, there is insufficient certainty about what things like responsibility, explainability, or transparency really mean. Further, it is an open question how they are to be achieved in practice. The research project will thus comprise two distinct but essentially connected aspects.

• The initial question is What are the requirements of RAI in the context of public administration? This raises a cluster preliminary questions, including: How do we identify the requirements of RAI in any given context; Can the requirements of RAI ever by fully determined in any context?; and How do we proceed if the requirements of RAI are fundamentally open-textured and context-specific?
• Once the requirements of RAI have been identified (or, just as likely, assuming they cannot be completely determined), the how can these requirements be operationalised? This will entail a number of questions around the operationalisation of RAI at three levels:
• Technical arrangements to ensure RAI (eg, data hygiene, model training, finetuning, guardrails, metaprompts, constitutional AI, etc)
• Organisational and operational arrangements to ensure RAI (eg, human in/on/over the loop, managerial control and accountability, behavioural aspects of human-machine interaction, etc)
• External accountability arrangements (eg private law liability, and public law judicial review, etc) to ensure the requirements of RAI are met ex post when something goes wrong.

The successful candidate, as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with a PhD in Law (or a Senior Research Associate with a LL.M. and substantial relevant experience), will be expected to make an independent contribution to our understanding of these questions, for example developing a framework for addressing them and a defensible heuristic approach to moving on to the operational aspects notwithstanding a degree of uncertainty. A major component of this will be to consider and elaborate on the role of law and legal thinking in the design, development, deployment and iterative review and re-design of technical solutions to meet governance criteria such as responsibility. Further, the successful candidate will work together with the software engineering colleagues to develop and refine a conceptual framework along the lines of the three levels set out above. This will include, for example, a taxonomy or map of the various technical arrangements possible in the current and expected state of the artand, just as importantly, how they relate to the other two (non-technical) levels.

Administrative Work

• Organisation of conference
  • Point of contact for moderators and speakers
  • Collation of conference materials (e.g. synopsis, speaker profile, etc)
• Formation of international collaboration network

QUALIFICATIONS

This is a demanding research field at the cutting edge of a quickly iterating cluster of technologies and spanning multiple disciplines. The desirable characteristics of a successful candidate reflect this fact.

• A Ph.D. in Law and demonstrated track record in legal research, preferably embracing dimensions of empirical, doctrinal, conceptual, and/or normative scholarship. Candidates who have a Masters in Law (LL.M.) with substantial experience in conducting research work may be considered.
• Demonstrated technical fluency, with an ability to communicate with technical counterparts about concepts in data science software engineering and to identify the legally salient features of technical systems.
• Demonstrated cross-disciplinary interest and aptitude for self-directed lifelong learning, for example through formal courses or through structured and effective autodidactic efforts.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively within an interdisciplinary team.
• Some experience in project management, including the design, execution, and evaluation of research projects.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to present research findings clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.

A strong commitment to ethical research practices and the responsible use of technology in legal applications.

OTHER INFORMATION

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Please note that your application will be sent to and reviewed by the direct employer - Singapore Management University