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AI Forward Initiative (AI Exploration opportunities - AIEs) is sponsored by DARPA. AI Forward is DARPA's initiative to explore new directions for artificial intelligence (AI) research that will result in trustworthy systems for national security missions. AIEs are unique funding opportunities for researchers to establish the feasibility of new AI concepts.
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Department of War organization. Reimagining the future of artificial intelligence for national security DARPA’s Information Innovation Office Director Dr. Kathleen Fisher presents on trustworthy AI at the DARPA Forward event in Pullman, Wash. , on Sept.
13, 2022. AI Forward is DARPA’s initiative to explore new directions for artificial intelligence (AI) research that will result in trustworthy systems for national security missions. To initiate AI Forward, DARPA hosted two workshops in summer 2023 at which participants brainstormed new directions for the field.
Approximately 200 participants from across the commercial sector, academia, and government attended and generated ideas that inform DARPA’s next phase of AI exploratory projects, known as AI Exploration opportunities (AIEs). AIEs are a key component of the agency’s broader AI investment strategy aimed at ensuring the United States maintains an advantage in this critical and rapidly accelerating technology area.
What does it mean to be trustworthy? Despite progress in the field, AI still requires significant investment and advancement to develop technology that reliably operates, interacts appropriately with people, and meets the most pressing national security and societal needs in an ethical manner. DARPA seeks qualified researchers and experts to join the agency and help define the future of AI technology.
Trustworthy AI research thrusts --> DARPA experts estimate that research in the following areas will be essential to creating trustworthy technology: Foundational theory, to understand the art of the possible, bound the limits of particular system instantiations, and inform guardrails for AI systems in challenging domains such as national security; AI engineering, to predictably build systems that work as intended in the real world and not just in the lab; and Human-AI teaming, to enable systems to serve as fluent, intuitive, trustworthy teammates to people with various backgrounds.
Building on 60+ years of AI research DARPA has been generating groundbreaking research and development for 65 years – leading to game-changing military capabilities as well as icons of modern society such as initiating the research field that rendered self-driving cars, and developing the technology that lead to Apple’s Siri.
Since 2018 through the AI Next campaign , we invested more than $2 billion to advance AI for national security purposes. Today, roughly 70% of DARPA’s current programs benefit from AI and machine learning technology. We’re investing in more than 30 programs aimed at the exploration and advancement of a full range of AI techniques.
These include symbolic reasoning, statistical machine learning, meta-cognition, explanation and assurance, and hybrid methods. We want to push beyond second-wave machine learning techniques toward contextual reasoning capabilities, so that machines could be more than just tools, and function as true partners. Building on the success of AI Next, the AI Forward initiative focuses on trustworthiness for these systems.
This focus will be critical to developing technology that reliably operates, interacts appropriately with people, and meets the most pressing national security and societal needs in an ethical manner.
EMHAT: Exploratory Models of Human-AI Teams FACT: Friction for Accountability in Conversational Transactions FoundSci: Foundation Models for Scientific Discovery Reimagine the Future of AI for National Security How to Create AI Technology We Can Trust | Ep 66 The DARPA perspective on AI and autonomy at the DoD | Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) | March 2024 Prepping for Future of AI Through High-Risk, High-Reward R&D | Federal News Network | March 2024 Kathleen Fisher: DARPA and AI for national security | The Gradient podcast | December 2023
According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and businesses of all sizes, particularly those with groundbreaking, high-risk/high-reward ideas. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
AI Forward Initiative (AI Exploration opportunities - AIEs) is funded by DARPA. Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
Hello Alice Small Business Growth Fund is sponsored by Hello Alice (with Mastercard). This fund provides capital to entrepreneurs to grow and move their businesses forward. Recipients receive $5,000 to help accelerate their growth rates. While not exclusively for training, it can support various growth initiatives, which may include professional development.
DeepRAP: Deep Reasoning, Abstraction & Planning towards trustworthy Cognitive AI Systems is sponsored by European Commission — Horizon Europe. Expected Impact: The resulting portfolio will not only advance the scientific state-of-the-art but also build a robust, interoperable, and application-driven community, positioning Europe at the forefront of trustworthy cognitive AI. It should also lay the foundations for future European leadership in safe, human-centric cognitive AI, supporting sovereignty and competitiveness in key sectors. It will support the ambitions of the AI Act [1] and the European approach to Artificial Intelligence [2] . Expected Outcome: Ambitious proposals put forward under this call will deliver: Models and/or architectures that handle multimodal data and knowledge, uncertainty, and can be trained and deployed with constrained computational resources Provable trustworthiness mechanisms ensuring explainability, transparency, fairness, risk evaluation, security and alignment with ethical and legal standards, including fundamental rights and the EU AI Act, and Demonstrate the developed capabilities integrated in a cognitive AI system (reaching TRL4) performing complex real-world tasks (e.g., scientific discovery, decision support, problem solving) as well as simulations at a scale. In addition, proposals will: Propose new methods and metrics for evaluating and certifying reasoning and trustworthiness in AI as well as the use of the computational resources Follow the FAIR principles ensuring all data, models, and results are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable to maximise transparency, reproducibility, and impact, and Develop synergies with EU initiatives such as TEFs (AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities) [3] , eBrains [4] , Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE) [5] , AI-on-demand Platform (AIoD) [6] and the Quantum Flagship [7] . Portfolio approach The composition of the portfolio of projects to be funded under the DeepRAP Challenge will ensure comprehensive coverage across the following categories with a view to ensuring breadth and enabling synergies between the projects: Category 1 – Cognitive Function Capability: Reasoning, abstraction, and planning should be covered by the selected portfolio. Category 2 – Technological Approach: The selected projects are expected to use a variety of technological approaches, including but not limited to, neuro-symbolic AI, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and novel frameworks inspired by interdisciplinary fields, and Category 3 – Use Case and Application Domain: The selected projects will cover a variety of real-world domains, such as industry, mobility, civil security, scientific discovery, health, cybersecurity, justice and human-robot interaction. The selected projects will also be assigned to lead and/or engage in portfolio activities centred on the following priorities: Interoperability: Establishing common standards and protocols to ensure seamless alignment between projects Benchmark Development: Co-creating a DeepRAP benchmark with shared tasks and an open evaluation platform for transparent assessment Common Pilots: Delivering joint pilot demonstrations addressing complex real-world problems to showcase DeepRAP capabilities Multiagent Integration: where feasible, combining project outcomes into modular, multiagent AI systems demonstrating collective reasoning and planning through structured interactions among multiple agents Application Shaping: Defining impactful use cases and engaging stakeholders to guide the development and adoption of innovative cognitive AI systems, and Ethical and Societal Alignment: Proactively addressing ethical, legal, and societal considerations, including fundamental rights, transparency, privacy, safety, and fairness of cognitive AI systems. Objective: Innovative ideas put forward under this Challenge must explore novel approaches, including combinations of existing techniques (i.e. neuro-symbolic AI), or the creation of entirely new frameworks that go beyond current, traditional, deep learning and reinforcement learning paradigms. These could Programme areas: Horizon Europe (HORIZON), Innovative Europe, The European Innovation Council (EIC), The Pathfinder for Advanced Research
DARPA's FY26 Release 6 carries seven SBIR and three STTR topics closing October 21, 2026. TRIAGE-X and ICU-in-a-Box are listed at $2 million each, CORPS at $750,000 — not Phase I feasibility money. Meanwhile DoW FY-27 Release 1 pre-released October 7 with 25 topics, zero of them DARPA's, and a new one-proposal-per-topic rule that took effect October 1. Here is how to read both calendars.
Read articleDPA26BZ06-DV023 is a Direct-to-Phase-II SBIR paying $700,000 over 18 months plus a $500,000 option. The physics demands 256x more transmit power than the systems that qualify you to compete, and DARPA will not accept modeling alone as proof. Here is the eligibility wall, the five engineering problems, and who can realistically win it before the October 21 close.
Read articleRelease 6's SBIR topics got the attention. Its three STTR topics — SHIELDER, fuel-flexible electric propulsion, and hypersonic wind tunnel noise diagnostics — are all Direct-to-Phase-II, all require a research institution to perform at least 30 percent of the work, and all close October 21, 2026. The feasibility gates are the real filter.
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