Last year, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart launched an initiative to compile and publish proposals on the subject of generative artificial intelligence (AI). They requested submissions of papers detailing effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action to further develop and understand the field.
The appeal for the first round of papers generated a robust response, with the institution receiving 75 proposals. After review, 27 of these were selected for seed funding. Encouraged by the active interest and the high quality of the ideas submitted, a second call for proposals was announced during the fall.
In the second round, 53 submissions were shared with the faculty committee, which comprised members who had been present during the first round. Of those, 16 were selected to receive exploratory funding. These proposals were co-authored by interdisciplinary groups of faculty and researchers from all five of MIT’s schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. The topics of research ranged across many disciplines, all exploring the potential impact and applications of generative AI in multifarious fields.
The selected research groups are set to receive funding ranging from $50,000 to $70,000. The funds will be used to create 10-page impact papers from each of the proposals. These papers will later be shared extensively via a publication venue, managed and hosted by the MIT Press, under the aegis of the MIT Open Publishing Services program.
Thomas Tull, a member of the MIT School of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Council and a former innovation scholar at the School, continued his support from the first round by contributing funding to the effort.
The research proposals primarily addressed areas like privacy and verifiability in AI, discovery in physical sciences through AI, as well as AI’s role in art generation, human interaction, civic engagement, textile engineering, drug discovery, live music performances, and support for the aging population. They also delved into the impacts on the creative economy, robust and reliable systems for AI, the role of language, and the effects on visual artists in the era of generative AI.
