EPSRC Next Generation Artificial Intelligence (AI): Explainable AI

Funding for projects focused on speculative and high-risk fundamental research with the potential to deliver high reward and a step change in the explainability of future artificial intelligence systems.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have launched this pilot opportunity to support speculative and high-risk fundamental research with the potential to deliver high reward by enabling a step change in the explainability of future AI systems. The opportunity is the first to launch under the flagship UKRI IS8 AI Programme and is intended to the be the first in a series of next-generation AI funding opportunities spotlighting emerging priorities in response to the UKRI AI Strategic Framework, societal and governmental needs.

The opportunity aims to:

• Lay the foundations for future societal, economic and technological benefits, including new market opportunities for the UK.
• Strengthen the UK’s capability to design, develop and deploy explainable AI technologies.
• Broaden access to strategic AI funding, particularly for new entrants and early and mid-career researchers in the UK.
• Enable small-scale, rapid projects that generate foundational insights that can be built on in the future.
• Deliver a faster process compared to current standard funding routes, whilst maintaining robust decision making that is proportionate to the level of risk.

Projects should:

• Aim to disrupt existing areas of explainable AI research or create new ones, delivering research with the potential to lead to radically new and disruptive technologies and a step change in explainability of future AI systems.
• Adopt a risk tolerant approach utilising ways of working that encourage and enable transformative outcomes rather than incremental advances.
• Support an ambitious and capable project team with the appropriate breadth and depth of expertise required to achieve the research objectives.
  

Applicants are encouraged to be as adventurous as possible in their thinking. Creative and potentially unconventional ways of working will be supported. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome. 

Applications are encouraged from a broad and diverse range of researchers, including early- and mid-career researchers, to help capture a wider diversity of research excellence, creativity and approaches from across the community to enable more transformative outcomes. Proposals are also welcomed from a diverse range of research backgrounds, including mathematics, computer science, AI, and other relevant disciplines, and encourage applicants to explore how their expertise can contribute to advancing AI explainability. 

Projects are not expected to:

• Produce tangible outcomes, such as new AI models or spinouts, within two years.
• Succeed in all of their research goals, especially the most risky and ambitious.
• Avoid failure; approaches that do not work as intended can still generate important learning and valuable knowledge for the wider research community.

Applicants are expected to explain why their proposed research cannot be supported via other funding routes (for example, applicant-led responsive mode or utilising the flexibility afforded by critical mass funding).

The maximum duration of this award is 24 months. Projects must start on 1 February 2027.