Senior Research Associate/Research Fellow (1-year contract), YPHSL

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 insensitive contexts such as public service delivery or the management of public infrastructure, there isinsufficient 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 comprisetwo distinct but essentially connected aspects.

• The initial question is "What are the requirements of RAI in the context of public administration?" Thisraises a cluster preliminary questions, including: "How do we identify the requirements of RAI in any givencontext"; "Can the requirements of RAI ever by fully determined in any context?"; and "How do we proceedif 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 completelydetermined), the how can these requirements be operationalised? This will entail a number of questionsaround 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, managerialcontrol and accountability, behavioural aspects of human-machine interaction, etc)
• External accountability arrangements (eg private law liability, and public law judicial review, etc) to ensurethe 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 ResearchAssociate with a LL.M. and substantial relevant experience), will be expected to make an independentcontribution to our understanding of these questions, for example developing a framework for addressing themand a defensible heuristic approach to moving on to the operational aspects notwithstanding a degree ofuncertainty. A major component of this will be to consider and elaborate on the role of law and legal thinking inthe design, development, deployment and iterative review and re-design of technical solutions to meetgovernance criteria such as "responsibility". Further, the successful candidate will work together with thesoftware engineering colleagues to develop and refine a conceptual framework along the lines of the threelevels set out above. This will include, for example, a taxonomy or map of the various technical arrangementspossible in the current and expected state of the art—and, 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

This is a demanding research field at the cutting edge of a quickly iterating cluster of technologies andspanning 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 ofempirical, 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 aboutconcepts in data science software engineering and to identify the legally salient features of technicalsystems.
• Demonstrated cross-disciplinary interest and aptitude for self-directed lifelong learning, for examplethrough 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 researchprojects.
• 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.

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