The National Institutes of Health has told us to limit the number of applications researchers submit and limit the amount of money to use artificial intelligence when writing proposals.
The agency announced last week that it would accept six “new, update, resubmit or revision applications” per principal investigator per calendar year. The principal investigator is the designated principal investigator for the study.
The announcement states that NIH “has been observed recently that major researchers have submitted numerous applications, some of which may have been generated by AI tools,” adding that the use of such a tool will allow “to submit more than 40 different applications in a single application submission round.” Michael Lauer, who retired in February as NIH's Deputy Director of Foreign Studies, said he's seen this happen in the past. Science It has been reported.
NIH says it does not consider applications that are substantially developed by AI or that contain sections that are substantially developed by AI as original ideas for applicants. This could lead to loss of funds for overuse of AI, according to the new policy. However, it does not define the extent to which AI usage is submitted “substantially developed by AI.”
“If AI detection identifies a post-prize, the NIH can refer the issue to the Research Integrity Bureau to determine whether there is a research misconduct or not, whether it is taking enforcement action at the same time.
Email to In Higher EdNIH said, “It is reasonable to expect that AI usage in application development could increase rapidly as AI is becoming more and more common.” The agency said it “want to reduce the potential overload of the review system.”
Still, the NIH said it expects relatively few researchers to be affected by the new restrictions.
“Only 1.3% of applicants who submitted more than six or more principal investigators/program directors or multiple principal investigator applications in 2024,” the NIH wrote in an email. “Co-submissions involving collaborators or other senior/primary staff will not be affected by this policy and will not be included in the applicant's six applications per year.”
Although the NIH did not mention that in its announcement, the maximum grant application cap comes in the Trump administration's proposal to cut the institution's funding by about 40% next year.
Public flagship faculty who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of hurting the institution said they would only support the new policy if the NIH budget was not cut. She already submits at least three applications each year, she said. If the NIH budget is cut, it will be difficult to get funding, and “we might have to hit six,” she said.
“To be honest, we're losing a lot of labs,” she said.
At Bluesky, Jason Moore, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research and Education and chairman of Cedars-Sinai's Computational Biomedicine Division, said there are “some bad actors who will ruin it for the rest of us.”
The NIH says the new policy will not apply to R13 Conference Grant Applications or “T Activity Codes.” This includes grants for purposes including training undergraduate and graduate students.
