About AI2050

AI2050 is an initiative at Schmidt Sciences grounded in the following motivating question:

It’s 2050. AI has turned out to be hugely beneficial to society. What happened? What are the most important problems we solved and the opportunities and possibilities we realized to ensure this outcome?

The initiative aims to answer this question primarily by making awards to support work conducted by individuals from across the globe and at various stages in their careers. Eric and Wendy Schmidt have committed $125 million over five years to the initiative; Eric Schmidt and James Manyika are co-chairs of the initiative.

Drawing on previous work and numerous conversations with other experts, the initiative has developed a working list of the hard problems for AI2050. This list is aimed at realizing the opportunity for society from AI as well as addressing the risks and challenges that could result from the technology, and it will guide the initiative’s investments.

Awards

AI2050 issues awards to support work conducted by researchers. These awards primarily aim to enable and encourage bold and ambitious work, often multi-disciplinary, that is typically hard to fund but socially beneficial. Awards are given for exceptional work tackling one or multiple items from a working list of hard problems. AI2050 awards are selected using a closed nominations process, so there is no application.

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Artifacts

AI2050 shares research findings from our Fellows. Work supported by AI2050 is open-source and published, so that society can benefit from this important work. This includes research from the award recipient network, from our collaborations with leading groups, and from the initiative itself.

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Community

AI2050 Fellows come from around the globe. Through this initiative, we support talented researchers at various stages of their careers, to help encourage the next generation of researchers to focus on the hard problems in AI. AI2050 Fellows, the broader AI community, and other stakeholders regularly convene to discuss and advance the work of the initiative.

Our Founders and Co-Chairs
Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt Founder of Schmidt Sciences and AI2050 Co-chair

Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001-2011 where he pioneered the company’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. Eric oversaw the company’s technical and business strategies alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.

From 2018-2020, Eric served as the Technical Advisor...

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Wendy Schmidt
Wendy Schmidt Founder of Schmidt Sciences

Wendy Schmidt is a philanthropist and investor who has spent nearly two decades creating innovative non-profit organizations to work with communities around the world for clean, renewable energy, resilient food systems, healthy oceans and the protection of human rights. The critical interconnections between human activity, the land we live on and the ocean we depend upon are the central drivers of Wendy’s philanthropic work. Through their philanthropy, Wendy and her husband Eric are working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world...

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James Manyika
James Manyika AI2050 Co-chair

James is Senior Vice President at Google-Alphabet reporting to the CEO. As President for Research, Technology & Society he focuses on Google and Google DeepMind’s most ambitious foundational and applied innovations in AI, Computing and Science and in areas that have potential for broad beneficial impact on people and society. He also oversees Google Research - pursuing cutting-edge foundational and applied work in ML and Computer Science, Quantum AI, Science and Society – and Google Labs – Google’s home for...

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Our Team
Mark Greaves
Mark Greaves Executive Director

Mark Greaves is the Executive Director of AI2050. An initiative of Schmidt Sciences, AI2050 supports exceptional people working on key opportunities and hard problems that are critical to get right for society to benefit from AI.

Prior to joining Schmidt Sciences, Mark was a senior leader in AI and data analytics within the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he created and managed large research programs in AI on behalf of the US Government. Prior to this,...

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Olivia Randall
Olivia Randall Senior Associate

Olivia Randall is a Senior Associate at Schmidt Sciences where she supports the AI2050 program.

Prior to joining the team at Schmidt Sciences, Olivia worked on the Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Rise initiatives at Schmidt Futures, building entrepreneurial programs for impact-driven founders. Previously, Olivia worked at Ivory Innovations where she helped source and vet candidates for a national prize in housing affordability.

Olivia graduated from the University of Utah with an Honors Bachelors of Science in Finance and a Minor in Urban...

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Maya Moretta
Maya Moretta Program Delivery Associate

Maya Moretta is a Program Delivery Associate at Schmidt Sciences. Through her work, she supports program teams and awardees as they progress through the entire award life cycle, from proposal submission to final evaluation.

Prior to joining Schmidt Sciences, Maya developed her passion for progressive and equity-focused grant making while designing and launching a progressive, equity-focused general operating support grant program at Maryland Humanities in Baltimore.

Maya holds a B.A. in History and African-American Studies from Georgetown University, where she...

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Mike Belinsky
Mike Belinsky Advisor

Mike Belinsky is a Director at Schmidt Futures, where he supports current programs on strategy and execution and helps design and launch new programs.

Prior to Schmidt Futures, Mike was a principal at The Bridgespan Group, where he led teams that addressed complex strategy and execution challenges for foundations, impact investors, and nonprofits. At Bridgespan, Mike also helped build the impact investing practice.

Mike also co-founded Instiglio, a social enterprise that develops impact bonds and results-based financing programs in low-...

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About Schmidt Sciences

Schmidt Sciences is a philanthropy dedicated to fostering the advancement of science and technology. We approach this by identifying under-supported or unconventional areas of exploration and discovery in order to accelerate and deepen our understanding of the natural world and develop solutions to real-world issues. We seek ideas, people, and techniques across disciplines of science and technology to catalyze results for society. Our focus areas include AI and Advanced Computing, Astrophysics and Space, Biosciences, Climate, and Cross-Science programs. Learn more at https://www.schmidtsciences.org/.