ARIA Funding Call for Safeguarded AI (United Kingdom)

The UK Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) is launching its second funding call for Safeguarded AI, seeking individuals and organizations interested in developing safeguarded AI products for domain-specific applications. These applications could include optimizing energy networks, clinical trials, or telecommunications networks.

About the Programme

The Safeguarded AI programme is a £59 million R&D effort aimed at creating a general-purpose AI workflow for developing domain-specific AI agents or decision-support tools for managing cyber-physical systems with quantitative guarantees. The program intends to improve both performance and robustness over existing operations.

The programme will employ a gatekeeper AI system, including a formal world model and safety specifications, to ensure the safe behavior of other AI agents. This system will use state-of-the-art AI combined with human expertise to provide effective task policies and verifiable safety guarantees, unlocking the potential of advanced machine learning models in critical business or safety applications.

The Safeguarded AI programme includes:

• Development of tools for building Safeguarded AI workflows.
• Demonstration of the system across various domains such as energy, transport, telecommunications, and healthcare.
• Proof of concept to show that AI can be safely used in critical applications with quantitative guarantees.
• Further R&D to scale and replicate results across different application areas.

Technical Areas and Objectives

The programme is divided into three Technical Areas (TAs). This funding call is for Technical Area 3 (TA3), focusing on:

• Track 1: Product developers including individuals, entrepreneurs, existing organizations, startups, SMEs, large companies, and non-profit R&D organizations interested in developing Safeguarded AI products for specific application domains.
• Track 2: Customers/end users who wish to participate in co-creating solutions by engaging in customer discovery processes with Track 1 Creators.

TA3 is split into two phases:

• Phase 1: Funding of £5.4 million distributed across approximately 10 teams for pilot projects to understand customer needs, elicit requirements, source datasets, and establish evaluation benchmarks.
• Phase 2: An anticipated further £8.2 million for 2-4 full-time teams to build proof of concept and deployable products, with decisions based on Phase 1 outputs.

Funding Information

TA3 Phase 1 will be funded with £5.4 million, with project duration expected through March 2026. Phase 2 funding will be available based on Phase 1 results. The programme is primarily focused on UK-based projects, but funding may be awarded to projects outside the UK if they can significantly impact the programme.

Eligibility Criteria

Applications are welcome from individual entrepreneurs, startups, and established companies. The majority of project work should be conducted in the UK, though proposals with a significant international component will be considered if they benefit the programme.

For More Information

For further details and to apply, visit the Innovate UK website.

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