NEH Awards $2.72 Million to Create Research Centers Examining the Cultural Implications of Artificial Intelligence

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced grant awards totaling $2.72 million for five colleges and universities to create new humanities-led research centers that will serve as hubs for interdisciplinary collaborative research on the human and social impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

As part of NEH’s third and final round of grant awards for FY2024, the Endowment made its inaugural awards under the new Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence program, which aims to foster a more holistic understanding of AI in the modern world by creating scholarship and learning centers across the country that spearhead research exploring the societal, ethical, and legal implications of AI. 

Institutions in California, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia were awarded NEH grants to establish the first AI research centers and pilot two or more collaborative research projects that examine AI through a multidisciplinary humanities lens. 

The new Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence grant program is part of NEH’s agencywide Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence initiative, which supports humanities projects that explore the impacts of AI-related technologies on truth, trust, and democracy; safety and security; and privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. The initiative responds to President Biden’s Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, which establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects Americans’ privacy, and advances equity and civil rights. 

“The rapid development of artificial intelligence has far-reaching consequences for American society, culture, and democracy,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “The humanities provide the ethical compass and historical context to help us understand the full implications of AI technologies, giving both creators and users of AI the necessary tools to navigate its risks and rewards responsibly, critically, and deliberately. Through NEH’s Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence initiative and these new grants, NEH is fostering much-needed research to help guide technology developers, policy makers, and the public in the responsible and ethical development and adoption of AI.” 

The Humanities Perspective on Artificial Intelligence initiative supports AI-related humanities projects through a number of NEH funding opportunities, including Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence and another new grant program, Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities, which supports individuals and teams of scholars engaged in humanities-centered research that examines technology and its relationship to society. It also encompasses AI research and education projects funded through NEH’s longstanding grant programs in Collaborative Research, Institutes for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities, and fellowship and summer stipend programs for individual scholars. 

Since launching the Humanities Perspective on Artificial Intelligence initiative in October 2023, NEH has awarded approximately $3.7 million to support research on the promises and pitfalls of AI technologies, on the development of AI tools and methods to investigate humanities topics and resources, and training and curriculum projects that increase AI literacy among humanities scholars and the public. 

In April 2024, 19 new projects were awarded a total of $1.9 million in Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities grants. These awards funded a range of research projects undertaken by individuals and teams of scholars, including: a book on the use of artificial intelligence to generate and disseminate disinformation to influence, manipulate, or deceive audiences; a history of life-support technology in the United States and how it changed American culture and health care in the 20th century; and an analysis of the ways individuals in creative industries engage with generative artificial intelligence technologies and its potential impact on arts and culture.

Other projects under the Humanities Perspective on Artificial Intelligence initiative include a grant to Eastern Connecticut State University to develop an AI-related humanities curriculum across five liberal arts colleges, and a cooperative agreement with the Modern Language Association to hold a two-day convening on the impact of AI on reading, writing, and languages.

Additional AI-related projects receiving funding today include work at the University of South Dakota on the development and testing of SubjectSpotter, AI-based software to automatically create subject tags for digitized cultural heritage materials to enhance search and usability; and a weeklong institute at the University of Kansas focused on teaching critical AI literacy to secondary, community college, and college-level humanities instructors. 

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania will receive a $200,000 grant to work as part of a multinational team on a comparative study of the role of large corporations in developing, deploying, and regulating artificial intelligence in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This grant was awarded by NEH as part of the Trans-Atlantic Platform, an international collaboration between 11 major funders in the humanities and social sciences from the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Croatia, France, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation on humanities and social sciences research that addresses the challenges of the 21st century. 

Five new Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence grants were awarded today:

• The University of California, Davis
  Outright: $499,717 
  to establish the UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures (CAIEF) on the democratization of AI technology. 
  
  Led by project directors Colin Milburn and Gary Snyder, the new CAIEF center will conduct six collaborative projects, three public engagement workshops, one conference, and produce an online handbook of best practices relating to civil rights and the democratization of AI in the United States. 
   
• Bard College in New York 
  Outright: $500,000
  to establish the Wihanble S'a Center, a humanities research center on Indigenous protocols for AI technology. 
  
  Led by project director Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota), a team of researchers from across the United States and Canada will conduct a collaborative research program, host interdisciplinary symposia, develop educational workshop modules, and publish scholarly articles and a book on Indigenous protocols for AI development that will guide the creation and refinement of AI wearable and digital technologies. 
   

• North Carolina State University 
  Outright: $500,000
  to establish the Embedding AI in Society Ethically (EASE) Center on the ethics of agent-based AI.

  Led by project director Veljko Dubljevic, the new EASE Center will serve as a hub for research on AI ethics. Projects supported by the grant include the creation of a postdoctoral fellow mentoring program, a new graduate minor in AI ethics, an annual conference, and special journal issues on topics such as ethical considerations related to autonomous vehicles, large language models (LLMs), and AI-based technologies for eldercare. 
   

• The University of Oklahoma, Norman
  Outright: $498,129
  to establish the OU Center for Creativity and Authenticity in AI Cultural Production, focusing on generative AI and the meaning of creativity, authenticity, and appropriation.

  Led by project director Hunter Heyck, the new center will coordinate six research teams investigating questions related to AI and creative and intellectual endeavors, public trust and governance, and Native American cultural sovereignty through a linked set of research projects, interdisciplinary conferences and associated edited volumes, and public lectures.
   

• The University of Richmond, in Virginia
  Outright: $491,863
  Match: $226,602
  to establish the Center for Liberal Arts and AI (CLAAI) on the social, cultural, and legal dimensions of artificial intelligence, with a focus on visual AI.
  
  Led by project director Lauren Tilton, CLAAI will serve as a nexus for a consortium of 16 liberal arts colleges across the Southeast to collaborate on research into the social, cultural, and legal possibilities and challenges of AI. Building upon an existing strength in visual AI, the center will support research fellows, provide faculty support grants to enhance AI expertise and expand course offerings in AI ethics, and convene institutes and a public symposium exploring issues related to AI and power and access, and the effects of AI technology on the environment. 

New application information for NEH’s Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence funding opportunity will be posted this fall. Consult the NEH website for application guidelines and deadlines. 

National Endowment for the Humanities(NEH): Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.