Child & Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Advisor (AI Safety Benchmark Project)

Mercor is partnering with a leading AI research organization to build clinician-informed benchmarks that evaluate how AI companion chatbots respond to adolescents experiencing mental health challenges. This remote contract role is intended for experienced child and adolescent mental health professionals who can help design realistic clinical scenarios, develop evaluation standards, and assess AI-generated conversations to improve the safety of conversational AI.

Key Responsibilities

Clinical Scenario Development

• Author fictional adolescent mental health case scenarios based on real-world clinical expertise.
• Ensure scenarios are developmentally appropriate, clinically realistic, and ethically sound.
• Incorporate a range of common and high-risk mental health situations.

Benchmark & Rubric Development

• Develop and refine clinician-informed evaluation rubrics for AI chatbot responses.
• Define high-quality response standards across key mental health domains.
• Contribute to structured evaluation frameworks for AI safety.

AI Evaluation

• Review AI-generated conversations involving adolescent mental health scenarios.
• Assess responses for clinical accuracy, safety, appropriateness, and ethical considerations.
• Provide expert feedback to calibrate AI evaluation systems.

Subject Matter Expertise

Advise on AI behavior related to:

• Suicide and self-harm risk recognition
• Safety planning and crisis referral
• Medical and therapeutic impersonation
• Diagnosis and treatment guidance
• Encouraging professional mental health care
• Parasocial attachment and emotional dependency
• Anthropomorphism and claims of consciousness
• Maintaining healthy interpersonal boundaries

Required Qualifications

• MD, DO, PhD, PsyD, or equivalent qualification in Psychiatry, Psychology, or a related mental health field.
• Clinical or research experience focused on children and adolescents.
• Expertise in one or more of:
  • Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
  • Clinical Child Psychology
  • Suicide Prevention
  • Self-Harm Assessment
  • Digital Mental Health
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
• Strong written communication skills.
• Ability to evaluate fictional clinical scenarios and AI-generated conversations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience conducting suicide risk assessments or crisis intervention.
• Research publications in adolescent mental health, suicide prevention, or digital therapeutics.
• Experience developing clinical guidelines or assessment frameworks.
• Familiarity with AI, digital health technologies, or mental health product evaluation.
• Experience supervising clinicians or multidisciplinary teams.

Compensation

• $80–$150 per hour

Role Details

• Remote (United States)
• Independent Contractor
• Approximately 10–15 hours per week
• Flexible schedule
• Weekly payments via Stripe or Wise

Why Join

• Help improve the safety of AI systems designed for adolescents.
• Influence future AI safety benchmarks and responsible AI deployment.
• Collaborate with leading AI researchers and mental health experts.
• Apply your clinical expertise to an emerging area of AI safety research.

About Mercor

Mercor partners with leading AI labs and enterprises to improve frontier AI systems through expert human knowledge. Contributors help build safer, more capable AI by providing domain expertise across specialized fields.