Terms of Reference: Language AI expert on LLMs and language tech for social impact

Location: Remote (home based)

Travel: None

Reporting to: CLEAR Global Language Technology Specialist

Timeframe: March 2025-June 2025,

Maximum available budget for assignment: USD 16,800. Please include your daily fee in USD in the ‘Desired Salary’ field in the application, and total quote as part of your technical and financial offer.

Deadline for applications: 1 March, 2025*

*Due to the urgency of this project, screening and interviews will commence immediately and the post may be filled before the deadline for applications.

CLEAR Global is an equal opportunity employer, committed to having a diverse team where individuals of all backgrounds collaborate and learn from one another. We believe we can be most effective with diverse experience and expertise in our team. We recruit on merit, actively seek diverse applicant pools and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, age, gender identity and expression, national origin, race and ethnicity, religious beliefs, marital or parental status, or sexual orientation, and welcome all types of diversity.

Background
CLEAR Global is looking for a language technology and AI expert to conduct research into the current state of large language models (LLMs) and especially the most recent iterations of reasoning models where it matters for the application of those models for social impact in low-resourced languages. As needed, this research might also include investigations of other types of models like automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS) and machine translation (MT) models, e.g. for comparison or as complements.

Given CLEAR Global’s current involvement in the Agriculture Information Exchange Platform, one focus of this research should be on agricultural use cases. But beyond this focus, it should also consider other use cases including climate change, humanitarian response and sexual and reproductive health.

The geographic focus of the work should be primarily Africa, and potentially India and South Asia as a secondary priority.

Responsibilities

Key activities include:

1. Desk research: Conduct desk research into LLMs (and potential other models like ASR, TTS and MT where necessary) and especially recent advancements in reasoning models and speech capabilities, including case studies and research. Questions will need to be agreed on with CLEAR Global. Key questions to answer could include:
   • How are reasoning models applied for social impact? Where do they deliver additional value and where do other models suffice?
   • What are the requirements? What are the costs? How have costs developed over time?
   • What are state of the art approaches to evaluate those models, especially in low-resource languages? Which evaluation datasets already exist and what are their benefits and shortcomings?
   • Where might small language models work and what are their limitations?
   • What are efficient methods to adapt those models for social impact use cases in low-resourced languages? What are the data and model training requirements to implement those methods?
2. Evaluations: Conduct independent evaluations where existing research and case studies do not answer the questions. Note: Please budget API and compute costs to conduct those studies. We expect the contractor to budget at least USD 2000 in API and compute costs.
   • This can include documented simple and quick experiments as well as more structured evaluations.
3. In cooperation with the CLEAR Global team, design and create relevant evaluation benchmarks that can serve as quick guidance on the utility and performance of existing and new models.
   • To create those benchmarks, CLEAR Global can work with the TWB (Translators without Borders) community which has access to a community of over 100,000 volunteer translators of 216 languages.
4. Provide inputs and review documents with relevance to the researched topics as well as contribution to other related research and project implementations where needed

Deliverables

• A report summarizing the research findings from desk research and evaluations, providing in text form and as a slide deck
• A report with recommendations, best practices and experiences for creating LLM fine-tuning and evaluation datasets for social impact use cases
• 1-2 webinars presenting the results to CLEAR Global and partners

Qualifications and experience required

The right candidate is an energetic team player, flexible and dynamic in approach, who agrees with CLEAR Global’s basic beliefs and values and who can work remotely with team members based throughout the world.

• University degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing or related field
• Proven experience in NLP, especially LLMs. This can be demonstrated by involvement in NLP projects, code repositories, paper authorship, other non-technical write-ups, and/or dataset/model/demo publications.
• Experience working with under-resourced languages and non-Latin writing systems
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Excellent working knowledge of written and spoken English
• Passion for making a positive impact in the world

Terms and conditions

Payments will be made as follows:

• An advance of 20% of the total contract value within 30 days of the signature of the contract
• An interim payment of 40% of the total contract value based on draft versions of the deliverables
• A final installment of 40% of the total contract value payable on satisfactory completion of the work and presentation of all deliverables.

The researcher will be expected to provide their own equipment and supplies (laptop etc.).

How to apply

CLEAR Global will accept offers from individual consultants and consulting firms.

To apply for this consultancy please send the following documents:

1- A technical and financial offer to include:

• a brief description (no more than two sides of A4) of how you would tackle this role
• a proposed work plan (including the number of days required for each task)
• a financial offer, specifying daily fees. Please also state your daily fee in the ‘Desired Salary’ field in the application.
• examples and descriptions of relevant similar work are welcome.

2- Curriculum vitae highlighting experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of at least three professional references.

Please upload the technical and financial offer as one document under “cover letter” and present the CV(s) of the expert(s) proposed in one document under “CV”.

About CLEAR Global

CLEAR Global helps people get vital information, and be heard, whatever language they speak. We believe that everyone has the right to give and receive information in a language and format they understand. We work with nonprofit partners and a global community of language professionals to build local language translation capacity, and raise awareness of language barriers. Our network of over 100,000 community members translate millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information a year.

Core values

CLEAR Global employees and volunteers passionately believe in the value of this work and take personal responsibility for achieving the mission. CLEAR Global’s mission and organizational spirit embody the core values established in its strategic framework:

• Excellence: In communicating humanitarian information in the right language, CLEAR Global is a leader in the translation industry and in the non-profit sector.
• Integrity: In believing that every person, whether it’s the people who we serve, our volunteers or our staff, has value, deserves respect and has inherent dignity.
• Empowerment: In using language to empower people around the world to control their own development and destiny.
• Innovation: In recognizing and celebrating the power of innovation to address humanitarian and crisis issues around the world.
• Sustainability: In recognizing that meeting our mission requires the establishment and maintenance of a solid financial and organizational infrastructure.
• Tolerance: In that our staff and volunteers value each other, our partners and our end users, create a supportive work environment, and conduct themselves professionally at all times.