Engage / Grants / Automating Research and Forecasting

Request for Proposals: Automating Research and Forecasting

We are seeking proposals of work which uses AI to automate scientific research workflows and generate reliable forecasts of technological change. This includes open-source assistants, continuous modeling systems, and infrastructure for collaborative forecasting.

Focus Areas

Specific work we are interested in funding:

 

  • Open-source AI research assistants
  • Automated forecasting systems

Automating research and forecasting

As AI systems grow more capable, they can dramatically accelerate discovery across fields like neuroscience, biology, and materials science, while also helping us understand and steer the trajectory of AI development.

Early choices in how we automate research may define the norms for how AI is used to generate knowledge across domains for decades to come. By supporting open-source, pro-social approaches to research and forecasting automation, we aim to build a more distributed, transparent, and trustworthy innovation ecosystem.

What we want to fund

We are interested in proposals that use AI to automate scientific research and improve our ability to forecast key technological developments—especially those related to AI itself. We are particularly interested in tools that automate parts of beneficial AI R&D—such as model evaluation, alignment research, interpretability, and benchmark generation. We also consider R&D automation across other scientific disciplines, especially if it has the potential to be transferable/generalizable across domains and empower human understanding in the research process.

With respect to forecasting and modeling, we believe that improving our forecasting capability could create opportunities for engineering safer paths between the technological realities of today and the possibilities of tomorrow. Today, human forecasting, modeling, and simulation progress is bottlenecked because it simply is not practical to establish and continuously update manual human forecasts and models on all technological domains of interest and their complex interplays. AI-enabled forecasts, models and simulations don’t face these opportunity costs and could be run on around the clock on a broader range of interrelated factors.

Specific work we are interested in

1. Open-source AI research assistants

We aim to fund tools that automate key parts of scientific research—like reading papers, generating hypotheses, or designing and executing experiments—through open-source assistants that can be adapted across domains.

2. Automated forecasting systems

We are looking for systems that use AI to generate, compare, and collaborate on forecasts on critical developments—such as AI capabilities, regulation, or biosecurity risks—and present them in ways that builders and decision-makers can act on.

​​If you have a proposal which falls within research and forecasting automation, but does not align with the specific work we have outlined here, you are still welcome to apply. However, please note that such proposals are held to a significantly higher bar. We do not accept proposals that fall outside this area.

Our priorities

Proposals should clearly show how the work will promote civilization-defending, human-empowering use of AI, with particular attention to reducing existential risks from advanced AI systems. We prioritize projects that:

Previously funded work

Examples of past projects we have funded include:

How to apply?

Complete the application form linked at the top of this page. Applications are accepted year-round and reviewed quarterly. Submission deadlines are:

Proposals are first reviewed in-house for fit and quality. Strong submissions are sent to technical advisors for further evaluation. If your proposal advances, we may follow up with written questions or a short call. We aim to make decisions within eight weeks of each deadline.

Who can apply?

We accept applications from individuals, teams, and organizations. Both non-profit and for-profit organizations are welcome to apply, but for-profits should be prepared to motivate why they need grant funding.

Funding and terms

For full eligibility criteria, financial details, and documentation requirements, see our Grant Guidelines and Conditions →

Further questions or feedback?

Please contact us at [email protected]

Grantees

Benjamin Wilson

Metaculus

Lovkush Agarwal

University of Cambridge

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