The European Innovation Council (EIC) wants to investige if the high number of applications for the new EIC Advanced Innovation Challenges call can be traced back to the usage of generative AI.
709 proposals were submitted by the call‘s stage 1 deadline. There were 425 submissions for the topic “Accelerating Physical AI” and 284 for the topic “Translating Disruptive New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) into practice.”
The problem with the high number of applications is that the resulting low success rate of 2.8% might frustrate top researchers to the extent that they won’t participate in future EIC or other Horizon Europe Calls. This trend is symptomatic for many EU calls, with the EIC being affected to the highest extent.
The overwhelming application rate has prompted the EIC to investigate the widespread suspicion that this surge is due to the use of generative AI, which can generate complex content, such as text, images, audio, code, or even compelling grant proposals, based on simple text inputs.
Michiel Scheffer, the EIC board president, claims in this context that generartive AI is widely used and that it has created a flood of mediocre grant proposals, which challenge the reviewers to a large extend. Dwindling national funds and the broad topic designs of the new EIC call could also explain the high number of applications.