Anthropic Fellows Program, The Anthropic Institute (Economics & Policy)

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

Anthropic Fellows Program Overview

The Anthropic Fellows Program is designed to foster AI research and engineering talent. We provide funding and mentorship to promising technical talent - regardless of previous experience. Fellows will primarily use external infrastructure (e.g. open-source models, public APIs) to work on an empirical project aligned with our research priorities, with the goal of producing a public output (e.g. a paper submission). In one of our earlier cohorts, over 80% of fellows produced papers.

We run multiple cohorts of Fellows each year and review applications on a rolling basis. This application is for cohorts starting in July 2026 and beyond.

What to expect

• 4 months of full-time research
• Direct mentorship from Anthropic researchers
• Access to a shared workspace (in either Berkeley, California or London, UK)
• Connection to the broader AI safety and security research community
• Weekly stipend of 3,850 USD / 2,310 GBP / 4,300 CAD + benefits (these vary by country)
• Funding for compute (~$15k/month) and other research expenses

Fellows Workstreams

Due to the success of the Anthropic Fellows for AI Safety Research program, we are now expanding it across teams at Anthropic. We expect there to be significant overlap in the types of skills and responsibilities across the roles and will by default consider candidates for all the workstreams.

Some of the workstreams may include unique assessment steps; we therefore ask you for workstream preferences in the application. You can see an overview of the current workstreams below:

1. AI Safety Fellows
2. AI Security Fellows
3. ML Systems & Performance Fellows
4. Reinforcement Learning Fellows
5. Economics & Societal Impacts Fellows

Across the workstreams, you may be a good fit if you:

• Are motivated by making sure AI is safe and beneficial for society as a whole
• Are excited to transition into empirical AI research and would be interested in a full-time role at Anthropic
• Have a strong technical background in computer science, mathematics, or physics
• Thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments
• Can implement ideas quickly and communicate clearly

Strong candidates may also have:

• Strong background in a discipline relevant to a specific Fellows workstream (e.g. economics, social sciences, or cybersecurity)
• Experience in areas of research or engineering related to their workstream

Candidates must be:

• Fluent in Python programming
• Available to work full-time on the Fellows program

The Anthropic Institute Fellows (Economics & Policy)

Fellows will undergo a project selection & mentor matching process. Potential research areas and mentors include:

• Economics
  • Maxim Massenkoff
  • Peter McCrory
• Policy, Security, and Society
  • Jack Clark
  • Marina Favaro
  • Jim Baker

Projects in this workstream may include:

• Designing and conducting empirical research on AI's economic effects, drawing on external data sources
• Developing new methodological approaches for studying AI's impact on labor markets, the future of work, and society
• Analysing the offense–defense balance for AI-enabled cyber and bio capabilities as models scale
• Measuring the extent to which model performance increases with custom harnesses?
• Identifying market driven mechanisms that could improve societal resilience to anticipated threats from AI systems?
• Identifying which metrics relating to AI R&D could service as early warning signals for recursive self-improvement

Unique candidate criteria

You might be a particularly great fit for this workstream if you:

• Have an interest in economics or policy research; prior experience in this area is a plus but not required
• Are adaptable and collaborative, able to take direction and contribute to team priorities rather than needing to pursue a predetermined research agenda
• Are skilled at writing up and communicating your results, even when they're null or unexpected
• Are passionate about translating research insights into actionable recommendations for improving AI systems and informing policy

Logistics

Logistics Requirements: To participate in the Fellows program, you must have work authorization in the US, UK, or Canada and be located in that country during the program.

Workspace Locations: We have designated shared workspaces in London and Berkeley where fellows will work from and mentors will visit. We are also open to remote fellows in the UK, US, or Canada. We will ask you about your availability to work from Berkeley or London (full- or part-time) during the program.

Visa Sponsorship: We are not currently able to sponsor visas for fellows. To participate in the Fellows program, you need to have or independently obtain full-time work authorization in the UK, the US, or Canada.

Program Duration: The program runs for 4 months, full-time. If you can't commit to the ful