The rise of more sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) agents poses an “existential threat” to the way research funding is awarded, experts have warned, saying autonomous AI systems could further flood grant competitions with applications, making it harder to identify the best ideas.
Speaking during a webinar organised by the League of European Research Universities (Leru), Geraint Rees, vice-provost for research, innovation and global engagement at UCL, said a new wave of AI tools represented a fundamental shift from today’s widely used generative AI.
Unlike large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, AI agents can autonomously gather information, make decisions and produce work with minimal human oversight.
“In the context of grants, generative AI may help you polish or write a better application,” Rees said. “But agentic AI will go off and write the application and submit it for you.”
Such systems can be trained on a researcher’s published work, funding criteria and previously successful grant applications to generate, review and improve proposals.
