Schmidt Sciences to Award $12 Million to Advance Research on Beneficial AI

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Schmidt Sciences named today 25 scholars working at the forefront of artificial intelligence as AI2050 fellows and will award them with up to $12 million to advance research that fully realizes the potential of AI to benefit humanity.

The AI2050 program asks researchers to imagine the year 2050, where AI has been hugely beneficial, and to pursue projects that help society realize this. The program funds senior researchers and early career scholars for two years to address a wide range of global challenges in AI. 

Previous senior fellows in the first two cohorts include esteemed researchers like Prof. Kelly Chibale from the University of Cape Town, recently elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and Fei-Fei Li, co-founder of World Labs. Early career fellows have also made advances in the field of AI, Jacob Steinhardt who founded Transluce, a startup dedicated to scalable technology for understanding AI systems, and Daniela Rus, who established Liquid AI and pioneered the use of liquid neural networks, which are effective, safer and smaller versions of solid-state networks.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform our lives for the better, particularly by accelerating scientific progress in profound ways,” said Eric Schmidt, co-chair of the AI2050 program and co-founder with his wife Wendy of Schmidt Sciences. “While the benefits of AI can far outweigh the challenges, realizing this potential requires thoughtful action today. We look forward to seeing how the 2024 AI2050 fellows help shape a future where AI serves the greater good.” 

The five senior fellows and 20 early career fellows in the third cohort join an AI2050 community that now includes 71 researchers from 15 different academic disciplines and 37 institutions in seven countries. The researchers are working on projects as varied as using AI to transform drug discovery in Africa, reducing maternal mortality, creating a global “genome” of human values, unlocking mysteries in particle physics, and even completing household chores—all with an emphasis on safety and effectiveness of AI systems. 

“The AI2050 program gathers experts across disciplines, continents and career stages to imagine a future that is brighter because of AI,” said James Manyika, co-chair of AI2050 and a senior vice president at Google. “I am excited about the work these fellows will undertake, motivated by our AI2050 challenge to tackle the hard problems associated with achieving beneficial outcomes for society from AI.” 

The senior fellows are selected based on existing contributions to the field, and early career fellows occupy postdoctoral or pre-tenture research positions. The fellows come together annually to share their findings and can receive additional support for collaborative projects.

“We are delighted to welcome a new class of fellows to AI2050,” said Mark Greaves, executive director of AI2050. “With the exponential growth in the speed of AI development, the AI2050 community plays a critical role in answering the challenges and seizing the opportunities that AI presents for our world.” 

The 2024 AI2050 senior fellows include:

• David Autor, economics professor, co-director of the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, MIT

Professor Autor researches how people interact with new AI tools and how AI will shape employment and income in the future. 

• Yejin Choi, incoming professor and senior fellow, Stanford University 

Professor Choi develops algorithms, benchmarks and metrics for AI to reflect multiple human value systems and preferences, suitable for a pluralistic world.

• Carla Gomes, computing and information science professor, director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, Cornell University

Professor Gomes addresses current AI/ML limitations for scientific discovery and decision-making by combining symbolic reasoning, deep learning and optimization into a unified system for high-dimensional reasoning.

• Roger Grosse, computer science associate professor and founding member of the Vector Institute, University of Toronto

Professor Grosse explores how to maintain the safety of highly capable AI systems by finding methods to bound the probability of rare problematic behaviors of a model, which may not explicitly show up during its testing phase.

• Michael Wooldridge, computer science professor, University of Oxford

Professor Wooldridge explores how large language models can create powerful AI agents to act on our behalf and execute plans—including by interacting with each other and cooperating to jointly achieve goals.

The 2024 AI2050 Early Career Fellows include:

• Sara Beery, assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Sarah Dean, assistant professor at Cornell University
• Tim Dettmers, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University
• Simon Du, assistant professor at the University of Washington
• Gabriele Farina, assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Anjalie Field, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University
• Marzyeh Ghassemi, associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Yoon Kim, assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Pang Wei Koh, assistant professor at the University of Washington
• Aviral Kumar, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University
• Raphaël Millière, assistant professor at Macquarie University
• Antonio Orvieto, ELLIS group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
• Parthe Pandit, assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
• David Rolnick, assistant professor at Mila-Quebec AI Institute
• Yuanyuan Shi, assistant professor at the University of California San Diego
• Florian Shkurti, assistant professor at the University of Toronto
• Bijun Tang, presidential postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University
• Ellen Vitercik, assistant professor at Stanford University
• Eric Wong, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania
• Chaowei Xiao, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison 

About Schmidt Sciences

Schmidt Sciences is a philanthropic organization that accelerates scientific knowledge and breakthroughs to support a thriving world. Founded in 2024, Schmidt Sciences brings together the science-focused efforts of Eric and Wendy Schmidt, whose philanthropy works toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. The organization prioritizes research in six focus areas poised for revolutionary impact: AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, science systems and space.

Author: Schmidt Sciences 

Source: Schmidt Sciences