NSF Working on an AI Chatbot to Streamline Grant Processes

The National Science Foundation's leading AI official revealed that the organization is initiating trials for an AI chatbot for grant opportunities, to refine future applications of the technology.

Dorothy Aronson, the agency's Chief AI Officer, said that the chatbot aims to streamline the NSF grant search process. 

By leveraging user inputs regarding their identity and research interests, it furnishes information on relevant grants and addresses inquiries about the application procedure. 

During a NAPA webinar in April, Aronson said, “We asked NSF, ‘What use cases can you think of that we could implement?’ So right from the start we engaged the community in the discussion. Within a couple of weeks, we got about 80 ideas.”

“The thing we’re building is a chatbot that will be externally facing the community and will answer questions about, ‘Well how do I work with NSF?’ or ‘I’m a physicist, which solicitation or which program would be a good one for me to connect with?’ It’s multilingual, and so it’s going to help people answer these simple questions – especially people who don’t have large organizations behind them that are prepping them and preparing them for work with NSF,” she added.

Earlier this month, NSF and the Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled the initial 35 projects selected for computational support under the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot.