AI and the New Future of Work CFP | Spring 2024
Region: Global
Call for Proposals, Spring 2024
About the program
Language models are fundamentally changing how work gets done, and high-quality academic research is needed to ensure that the new future of work that they will help create is bright. Microsoft is soliciting proposals to fund research that will help shape the landscape of work for years to come. Rather than focusing on research related to language models in general, this Call for Proposals (CFP) targets work that specifically explores the use of language models – small and large – in productivity scenarios. The plan is to fund truly creative research that redefines what work is in various contexts.
There are a number of potential topics that successful proposals may address. They may study approaches to augment human capabilities, identify and support new ways of getting things done with language models (versus just accelerating known work practices), explore how the benefits from productivity gains might be widely shared, create flywheels in which language models get better the more they are used, or address any other of the plethora of questions that lie before us as researchers interested in work. Proposed projects should target a budget of 50,000 USD or less.
Key dates:
- May 7, 2024:
Proposal period opened - June 3, 2024: Proposal period closed
- June 12, 2024:
Recipients announced
Areas of particular interest include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
- Leveraging interaction histories for model improvement in specific, real-world tasks
- SLMs for enterprise applications
- Creative or unexpected uses of language models
- Over/under-reliance interventions
- AI technologies for teams and organizations rather than just individuals
- Productivity effects of language models in specific industries/roles/functions
- Productivity effects at the team or organization level
- Language model technologies that demonstrably augment human labor (vs. substitute for it)
- Technologies and techniques that encourage adoption and learning of AI tools
- Proactive (vs. reactive) AI technologies for productivity scenarios
- Prompt optimization and recommendation technologies
- Agentic technologies for productivity scenarios
- Techniques and tools that support meta-cognition when using AI tools
- Technologies that foster trust between data producers and model builders / users.
- Provenance attribution in enterprises/organizations
Researchers are encouraged to review the 2023 New Future of Work Report (opens in new tab) for additional areas of interest.
Proposal requirements
Proposals should be for no more than 50,000 USD, although smaller proposals are encouraged as well. We are aiming for a lightweight application process and proposals should be no more than 500 words plus references. Please include budget information in your 500 words. Consider using Bing Chat or similar to help summarize your content if your proposal is running long!
Proposals must be submitted from individuals from academic institutions.
Timeline
- Monday, May 7, 2024, at 8:00 AM PT: submission portal opens
- Monday, June 3, 2024, at 11:59 PM PT: proposals due
- Wednesday, June 12, 2024: decisions announced
Eligibility
To be eligible for this RFP, your institution and proposal must meet the following requirements:
- Institutions must have access to the knowledge, resources, and skills necessary to carry out the proposed research.
- Institutions must be either an accredited or otherwise degree-granting university with non-profit status, or a research organization with non-profit status.
- Proposals that are incomplete or request funds more than the maximum award will be excluded from the selection process.
- The proposal budget must reflect your university’s policies toward receiving unrestricted gifts and should emphasize allocation of funds toward completing the research proposed.
Conditions
The following conditions apply to submissions and, as applicable if selected, your participation in the program. By submitting a proposal, you agree to the following:
- Microsoft may use your name and likeness to publicize your proposal (including proposal content) in connection with the AI and the New Future of Work in all media now known or later developed. For communication and community purposes participants’ names and or email address will be visible to other participants on email invitations and in virtual meetings.
- Microsoft has no obligation to maintain the confidentiality of any submitted proposals.
- Proposals will not contain information that is considered proprietary, confidential, classified, restricted, or sensitive.
- The submission review process is internal to Microsoft. No feedback will be given to submitters. Microsoft may, however, reach out to submitters for clarifications on submitted proposals.
Note: Microsoft will award these as unrestricted gifts. Our accompanying gift letter will indicate this and that addresses overhead issues in most cases. However, some schools still do take a small overhead out and we have no ability to influence that beyond the letter we provide, as well as no way of knowing which schools will do what. If your school will take overhead, you need to consider that when building out your plans and include it within the max $50k your proposal requests.