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OpenAI donated $50 million to 15 research institutions including Harvard to fund artificial intelligence in research as part of its NextGenAI consortium project, the company announced last week.
At Harvard, the funding will support the Institutional Data Initiative at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and research projects at Harvard Medical School, according to Vice Provost for Research John H. Shaw. MIT, Boston Public Library, and Boston Children’s Hospital will also receive funding.
Shaw wrote in an emailed statement that OpenAI “approached us to explore strengthening this relationship through the NextGenAI consortium.”
“The NextGenAI vision was aligned with our interests in advancing AI enabling research at Harvard, so we welcomed the opportunity to work with them to explore this opportunity,” he wrote.
Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor Catherine A. Brownstein, also a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, is the recipient of one of the NextGenAI grants. She said the money will go to reducing the diagnosis time for patients and improve AI alignment and medical decisions.
Brownstein’s research focuses on the discovery of new genes behind rare diseases, and uses AI to search through genomes for specific genes.
“I’ve been working with an OpenAI engineer on optimizing diagnosis,” she said, adding that it helps with analyzing coded phenotypes and standardized ontology.
Brownstein said the preliminary results are promising. “It’s been really exciting and promising so far where we have some potential diagnoses for a handful of individuals who are previously undiagnosed,” she said.
Both Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital have previously worked with OpenAI.
“Probably over 100 different projects are ongoing now in the use of AI at Boston Children’s to support — whether it’s diagnostics, whether it’s a support physician burnout — to create better efficiencies,” said John S. Brownstein, Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital.
“We identified this area of rare disease genetics as being one where there could be real opportunity,” John Brownstein said.
“Advancements in AI can lend themselves to even further our ability to support kids, identify a diagnosis, and eventually identify potential treatments for those kids,” he added.
In addition to research grants, NextGenAI will provide Harvard with “comprehensive support of research activities, including resources to support researchers, as well as compute credits to enable the work,” according to Shaw.
Compute credits are used on the OpenAI platform to purchase algorithm processing.
“NextGenAI is also focused on making more digital content publicly accessible to help strengthen tools that support research and teaching,” he wrote.
The new partnership provides Harvard research centers a funding boost amid fears federal funding may soon run out.
“Funding from non-traditional players is something that is great to see given some of the constraints in federal funding,” John Brownstein said.
Though the grants are currently reviewed on a case-by-case application basis from Harvard researchers, Shaw hopes that the initiative will expand across campus.
“Through the work at the IDI and HDSI, we hope that benefits of the relationship will be able to extend more broadly across the Harvard community,” he wrote.
—Staff writer Xinni (Sunshine) Chen can be reached at sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sunshine_cxn.
—Staff Writer Danielle J. Im can be reached at danielle.im@thecrimson.com.
