Open Thread 450

1. ACX hosts a weekly open thread where users can share content, ask questions, and discuss various topics. The platform also features a subreddit, Discord server, and in-person meetups across the globe. Some content is free, while others are subscriber-only.

2. Before the end of this week, ACX encourages readers to complete their annual Reader Survey. The survey will help shape future content and improvements on the platform.

3. Apollo Research, a company focused on minimizing risks associated with advanced AI, is seeking applicants for various roles. They specialize in creating security products for frontier AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, including Watcher, a coding agent security tool used in production to monitor billions of agent tokens monthly.

Candidates can apply for positions in London or San Francisco, including Engineering Manager (Product), Full-Stack Software Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Product Security Engineer, Research Scientist (Control), AI Red Team Engineer, AI Security & Control Researcher, AI Security Researcher, and Security Engineer. These roles offer competitive salaries, benefits, equity, and an unlimited token budget. Formal AI safety experience is not mandatory for security and product roles.

4. Metacelsus, a friend of the blog and ACX Grants evaluator, informs readers about a position at his reproductive technology startup, Ovelle Bio. Ovelle Bio is working on growing human eggs from stem cells and aims to solve infertility and support future generations. The company is hiring for a stem cell biologist position based in Boston, requiring a PhD or equivalent experience in mammalian cell culture and molecular biology.

However, the company values scientific creativity, adaptability, and passion for impactful problems over formal experience. Interested candidates can apply through the provided link.

5. The reader book review of Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais has sparked interest among ACX users. Surprisingly, the evaluation site Vals, which tests new models against real-world problems, recently reported that the new Claude Fable 5.1 model successfully decoded a famous 370-year-old unsolved cipher by Thomas Urquhart. This unexpected connection between literature and AI has captured the attention of many users.

6. Innovate Animal Ag, an ACX animal welfare grantee (with more information available at The Optimist's Barn), is seeking applicants for a new role at their startup, Ovelle Bio. The Head of Instrumentation & AI position will serve as the founding Chief Technology Officer for a hardware-and-data research program. The poultry industry faces challenges in obtaining high-quality commercial data, especially for welfare measurements, which are typically limited to small university studies with long turnaround times.

AI tools for continuous sensing, machine vision, and robotics are making it possible to measure welfare on a bird-by-bird basis in commercial flocks and conduct rigorous experiments based on these measurements. The ideal candidate should be a technical generalist with 0-to-1 experience, preferably with a hardware or physical-AI background, though knowledge of chickens is not required.

Remote work is available in the US, with the possibility of travel. While this project involves cooperating with factory farms to improve conditions on a marginal scale, opinions on the net positive or deontological implications may vary among animal advocates. Interested individuals can find more details and apply through the provided link.