Last summer, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Vice Provost Cynthia Barnhart put out a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls to action for the broad field of generative AI.” The call far exceeded expectations, with 75 proposals submitted. Of those, 27 were selected for seed funding.
In lithe of this enthusiastic response, Kornbluth and Barnhart announced a second call for applications this fall.
“The surge in interest and overall level of ideas made it clear that a second round was necessary,” they wrote in an email to the MIT research community this fall. The second call for proposals resulted in 53 applications.
After a second round of submissions, a faculty committee reviewed the proposals from the first round and selected 16 proposals to receive exploratory funding. Co-created by interdisciplinary faculty and research teams affiliated with all five schools of the Institute and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, the proposals offer insights and perspectives on the potential impact and applications of generative AI across a wide range of topics and disciplines.
Each selected research group will receive $50,000 to $70,000 to produce 10-page impact articles. These articles will be made widely available through a publishing venue managed and hosted by MIT Press under the auspices of the MIT Open Publishing Services program.
As with the first round of work, Thomas Tull, a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the MIT School of Engineering and a former innovation scientist in the School of Engineering, provided funding to support the effort.
The selected works are:
- “A Roadmap for End-to-End Privacy and Verifiability in Generative AI,” chaired by Alex Pentland, Srini Devadas, Lalana Kagal, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan;
- “The Virtuous Cycle: Generative Artificial Intelligence and Discovery in the Physical Sciences,” chaired by Philip Harris and Phiali Shanahan;
- “Cambrian Artificial Intelligence: Generating New Forms of Visual Intelligence” supervised by Ramesh Raskar and Tomaso A. Poggio;
- “Artificial Fiction and the Value of Art Generated by AI” – lecture given by Justin Khoo;
- “GenAI to Improve Human Interaction with Special Focus on Negotiation,” led by Lawrence Susskind and Samuel Dinnar;
- “Generative AI as a New Platform and Application Ecosystem” chaired by Michael Cusumano;
- “Generative AI for Cities: A Civic Engagement Playbook,” led by Sarah Williams, Sara Beery, and Eden Medina;
- “Generative Artificial Intelligence in Textile Engineering: Advanced Materials from Traditional Lace Craft” under the supervision of Svetlana V. Boryskina;
- “Generative Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Biomedical Innovation and Drug Discovery” led by Manolis Kellis, Brad Pentelute and Marinka Zitnik;
- “The Impact of Generative AI on the Creative Economy” chaired by Ashia Wilson and Dylan Hadfield-Mennell;
- “Redefining Virtuosity: The Role of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Live Music Performance,” chaired by Joseph A. Paradiso and Eran Egozy;
- “Reflective Learning with Generative Artificial Intelligence” under the supervision of Stefanie Mueller;
- “Robust and Dependable Systems for Generative Artificial Intelligence,” chaired by Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Kalai, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan;
- “Supporting an Aging Population with Generative AI” led by Pattie Maes;
- “Language Science in the Era of Generative AI,” chaired by Danny Fox, Yoon Kim, and Roger Levy;
- “Visual Artists, Technological Shock, and Generative Artificial Intelligence,” chaired by Caroline Jones and Huma Gupta.