The Cooperative AI Foundation's (CAIF’s) mission is to support research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI systems for the benefit of all of humanity. As the field of Cooperative AI is emerging and we are in an early stage of our grantmaking, our intention with this call is to keep the scope as wide as possible while staying true to CAIF’s mission. We will consider proposals that meet the following conditions:
Further guidance on what we mean by these terms and on some of the research directions that we are currently prioritising can be found in the frequently asked questions and the supporting document further below. You can also read about projects that we have funded here. The Introduction to Cooperative AI Curriculum is currently in development, but can be accessed if you would like to learn more about the research field of cooperative AI. We welcome any feedback on the curriculum via this form, which is particularly valuable whilst we are still developing the content.
We want to fund the projects that we expect to be the most valuable for our mission. The following five criteria will be central in our evaluation of proposals:
Anyone is welcome to apply to this call, and we welcome applications from disciplines outside of computer science.
Our aim is to be able to cover all costs for completing accepted projects. This could include:
We allow a maximum of 10% in indirect costs (overhead). We do not cover personnel costs for teaching.
We do not have a fixed upper limit on how large funding requests we consider, but cost-effectiveness is important to us and we do reject proposals where the costs do not stand in proportion to the expected impact. The grants we have made so far range from GBP 10,000 to GBP 385,000, with a median size close to GBP 150,000.
Applications will be processed quarterly in batches, based on the following rolling deadlines: January 14, March 17, July 30, and October 6. Submit applications by 23.59 in your local time zone. Applications are processed via the SurveyMonkey Apply platform, and should consist of a proposal of up to five pages, with a separate short project plan and budget. More detailed instructions about what your proposal should contain, as well as templates for budget and project plan, can be found on the application platform. Most applicants report spending around 20-30 hours on their application.
We suggest that applicants start preparing their application well before the deadline, so that we can answer any queries in time. After each deadline, we aim to process submitted applications and provide a decision within nine weeks from the deadline. This decision will be one of the following:
For accepted proposals we aim to complete the full process including due diligence within twelve weeks from the deadline. Some proposals may however take longer to process, particularly in the first rounds.
FAQs
The most common reason for rejection of a proposal is that it is not sufficiently in scope of the grant call. There are three common types of applications that we receive that fall out of the scope of what we consider for funding:
Additionally, there are some common reasons why we reject proposals that are in scope of our call:
As many applicants value feedback on their applications regardless of the outcome, we aim to provide constructive comments on as many applications as we are able to given our limited resources. Getting feedback on your application should therefore not by default be understood as that we would fund your application if you submit a new version where the feedback is addressed. In some cases, you might however be able to use the feedback to produce a new application that we would fund, so it is hard to give a general answer to this question.
Note the distinction between rejection and minor revision: if reviewers believe there is a high chance that you will be able to address the feedback in such away that your application qualifies for funding, you will be asked for a minor revision. A rejection is an indication that changes to the proposal would have to be significant to pass the bar for funding. If you are planning a resubmission and you are uncertain about how to interpret the feedback you received or the chances for acceptance, we highly encourage you to reach out to us and we will clarify this for your specific case.
We fund research that is focused on addressing multi-agent/cooperation problems involving AI. Typically, multi-agent problems include multiple artificial agents, or multiple human agents and at least one artificial agent. A few important things to note on this topic are:
Advanced AI is likely to transform society in many ways. We are focused on ensuring that the large-scale consequences for humanity are beneficial. In practice, this means that we are especially excited about work that has a clear path to positive impact at a very large scale (see examples below), rather than narrower applications (such as coordination between autonomous vehicles, for example).
For example, this could include work on AI tools for collective decision-making that could demonstrably scale to vast populations, allowing deeper democratic engagement and consensus building, or technical research on how to avoid the most severe kinds of conflict involving AI systems (which are increasingly being used in high-stakes military situations).
We cannot know for sure which work will be most relevant to AI systems that do not yet exist, but there are some things that can make work less likely to be relevant for future systems. This would for example be if your research depends a lot on properties of existing systems that we expect to change in subsequent generations. An example of something that would be less relevant here are theoretical analyses that make very restrictive assumptions and are unlikely to generalise, such that they're unlikely to tell us anything about real-world advanced AI systems.
It is important that we use our funding in a cost-effective way to fulfill our mission. A part of this is avoiding funding work that would be likely to happen (soon) regardless of our support. This is often hard to evaluate, but, for example, it is unlikely that we would fund research that is aiming at producing results or patents that would be commercially valuable, as this type of research can typically attract other funding.
Yes, we want to help you with this! If you have gone over the call description and this FAQ and you are still uncertain whether you should apply, you are welcome to reach out to us with a short description of your idea. You can email us at grants@cooperativeai.org or use our contact form. We will try to provide feedback to everyone and also continue to update this FAQ. Note that most of the time we will only be able to give feedback on how well your project fits the scope.
Yes, if you have more than one distinct research proposal that falls under the scope of the grant call, then you are welcome to submit more than one application. Each application will be considered completely independently.
For applications that are rejected in screening we will have limited ability to give feedback, but we might, for example, indicate if we think the proposal was out of scope for the call. For applications that are rejected after going through our full review process we will attempt to provide at least a couple of sentences of feedback or reason for rejection. Our capacity to do this will depend on how many applications we receive.
We have not set any upper bound for how much funding you can apply for. However, the budget should be for a maximum of two years, and you should ensure a prudent use of funds and consider the criteria on cost-effectiveness. To begin with, we will not process applications for less than GBP 10,000. This may change in the future. The grants we have made so far range from GBP 10,000 to GBP 385,000, with a median size close to GBP 150,000.
You can include travel expenses in your application budget as part of a research project, if the travel is directly related to and important for the project. However, we do not consider applications that are only for travel expenses.
Yes, we allow a maximum of 10% indirect costs.
We offer funding for universities in the form of grants (as opposed to unconditional gifts).
Your application will be read by administrative staff and by internal reviewers employed by CAIF. If your application is progressed past this stage, it will also be reviewed by external reviewers (typically two people) who are researchers knowledgeable of the field, as well as by the grantmaking committee. CAIF’s trustees may also access applications, if necessary. We do not share the identity of any reviewers with applicants. If you have any specific confidentiality concerns around your application there is a specific field in the application forms where you can let us know about this.
While the scope of this call is intentionally wide, there are some research directions that we would be especially excited to see proposals for. A brief and incomplete list of examples of such directions is provided below, with additional guidance given in the scope of the call and under the frequently asked questions. We expect to update this list over time, including with additional references (which at present are by no means comprehensive), and welcome feedback on how it could be improved.
Please note that we may also fund work that does not fall under or is not related to these examples. If you have ideas that fit the overall scope and match the selection criteria but that are different from what is listed above, please do not be discouraged from applying!
