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$10m funding call launched with Schmidt Sciences, Google DeepMind, and ARIA. How do Cooperativeai ensure safety in a world with millions of interacting agents, built and deployed by many different actors? Today, the Cooperative AI Foundation - in partnership with Schmidt Sciences, Google DeepMind and Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and supported by Google.org - is announcing a new technical research fund of up to $10m for researchers worldwide. Cooperativeai is offering funding of up to $300,000 (Tier 1) and up to $1,000,000 (Tier 2) for independent or academic researchers and institutions to address the risks emerging from large-scale ecosystems of interacting AI agents, deployed by multiple actors. Applications are now open, with a submission deadline of 9 August AoE. Awardees are expected to be announced in Autumn 2026. More technical details and the application process can be found here. Why this matters. While most present-day cases involve teams of agents orchestrated by a single actor (or 'principal'), Cooperativeai is beginning to see the emergence of more complex ecosystems of agents deployed by different actors across shared digital infrastructure. These multi-principal, multi-agent interactions create new opportunities for cooperation and shared benefit, but also new risks, which means focusing only on the safety and alignment of individual models is insufficient. While some of these problems will be addressed by market forces, Cooperativeai expect others to fall through the gaps. This funding call aims to fill those gaps, catalysing the foundational scientific research needed to understand, evaluate, and control risks emerging from large-scale ecosystems of interacting AI agents, deployed by multiple actors. Research areas. Cooperativeai welcome proposals in four priority areas, and Cooperativeai anticipate some opportunities for collaboration between teams addressing different areas: * Sandboxes and testbeds: Building realistic, reproducible environments to evaluate, compare and accelerate progress across all areas of multi-agent safety. This includes virtual marketplaces, simulated ecosystems and multi-organisation workflows. * The science of agent networks: Understanding the safety-relevant properties of interacting agent populations, including investigating how collective capabilities emerge and scale, how networks fail or become volatile and how to detect dangerous, unexpected population-level properties. * Strengthening agent infrastructure: Stress-testing the protocols for identity, reputation and commitment that secure cross-platform agent interactions. * Oversight and control: Developing methods to monitor deployed agent populations and mitigate collective harms at scale. About the partners. Google DeepMind is an artificial intelligence research laboratory. Schmidt Sciences is a philanthropic organisation that funds unconventional research in science and technology. The Cooperative AI Foundation is a charitable entity supporting research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI for the benefit of all. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is a UK R&D funding agency built to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. Google.org is the charitable arm of Google. It provides funding, programmes, and technical expertise to accelerate the missions of nonprofits in specific focus areas such as scientific progress. June 11, 2026 Lewis Hammond Research director. (C) Cooperative AI Foundation 2025 The Cooperative AI Foundation is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales under charity number 1201294, and incorporated as a company limited by guarantee established in England for charitable purposes only under company number 13485176. Its registered address is Courtenay House, Pynes Hill, Exeter, EX2 5AZ.

U of A will award about 10,000 degrees at Commencement. University Communications May 6, 2026 University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella will confer about 10,000 bachelor's, master's, doctoral and professional degrees at the university's 162nd Commencement on May 15. The approximately 90-minute ceremony will begin at 7:30 p.m. at Casino Del Sol Stadium and will be livestreamed on YouTube. More than 30,000 guests attend the university's Commencement celebration each year. "Excitement is building across our campus as we prepare to celebrate the U of A Wildcat Class of 2026," said Heather Lukach, executive director for presidential events and university ceremonies. "Graduates and their families will soon be welcomed by a remarkable community of dedicated staff, faculty and volunteers from across the university, all coming together to create an unforgettable Commencement experience. It's a powerful moment to honor our graduates' hard work, resilience and achievements as they reach this important milestone in their life journey." This year's Commencement speaker is Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Chairman of Google, co-founder of Schmidt Sciences, and a leading architect in the era of artificial intelligence. He is currently chair and CEO of Relativity Space, author of four New York Times best-selling books, and co-founder with his wife, Wendy, of several philanthropic organizations working to make the world healthy, resilient and secure for all. The couple founded the Schmidt Family Foundation, Schmidt Ocean Institute, and most recently, Schmidt Sciences. Schmidt Sciences is partnering with the U of A as a key collaborator on Lazuli - the world's first fully privately funded space telescope. "The University of Arizona embodies the curiosity, rigor and bold imagination that will shape the next era of discovery - not just in science and technology, but in tackling the world's greatest challenges," Schmidt said. "The work being done here today will define what's possible tomorrow. I am honored to address the Class of 2026 as they step into a pivotal moment in history, full of extraordinary opportunity and responsibility." Information for guests. Casino Del Sol Stadium Gates 3, 4, 6 and 7 will open to guests at 6 p.m. Guest seating is first come, first served, and no tickets are required. The university will enforce game-day security procedures at all guest entrances, including the stadium's clear bag policy and screening through metal detectors. Large bags, backpacks, or parcels are not permitted, and all personal items must be carried in an approved clear bag. The SafeCats app provides campus maps, real-time garage occupancy, ceremony schedules and the latest safety updates. Honorary degree and Alumni Achievement Award recipients. Schmidt will receive an honorary Doctor of Science from the U of A College of Science. He is one of five honorary degree recipients. Alice Chaiten Baker will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Baker has helped advance the arts and social sciences at the University of Arizona and in Tucson through years of philanthropy, community leadership and advocacy for education. Gabrielle Giffords will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. After a 2011 shooting that killed six people and critically wounded then-Rep. Giffords, she focused on her recovery and eventually co-founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, an advocacy and research organization later renamed GIFFORDS. F. Ronald Rayner will receive an honorary Doctor of Science from the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences. Rayner is an innovator in arid-land agriculture, helping develop no-till and minimum-tillage systems designed to conserve water - and has long advocated for student success at the U of A. Scott Stuber will receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts. A proud alumnus of the college, Stuber has spent decades redefining how films are created, distributed and experienced. He served as chairman of Netflix Films from 2017 to 2024 and is partnering with Amazon MGM Studios to relaunch the historic United Artists and to finance and release movies from his new production company. Cisco Aguilar will receive the university's Alumni Achievement Award. Aguilar serves as Nevada's Secretary of State, focusing on modernizing, innovating and building transparency in the office. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in business administration; 2004 with a master's in business administration; and 2004 with a Juris Doctor. Student award winners. Seven outstanding graduates will be presented awards at Commencement. The awards and their recipients are: Provost Award: Grant Palmer, who is graduating summa cum laude with honors with a Bachelor of Science in medicine and a minor in biochemistry. Robert Logan Nugent Award: Alicia Salazar Conteras, who is graduating with dual degrees in speech, language, and hearing sciences, and in Spanish; and Lane Vazquez Luna, who is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry with a minor in classics. Robie Gold Medal Awards: Braelyn Huff, who is graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and in politics, philosophy, economics, and law; and Gabriel Trinidad, who is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physiology and medical sciences, with minors in Spanish and biochemistry. Merrill P. Freeman Medals: Imon Contractor, who is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in operations and supply chain management; and Nicholas Davis, who is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting.

UI professor repairs damaged ancient manuscripts with AI. Paul Dilley received a $500,000 grant from Schmidt Sciences to develop AI tools that can reconstruct missing sections of ancient manuscripts. April 12, 2026 Paul Dilley, a University of Iowa assistant professor in the classics department, earned a $500,000 grant to use AI to restore ancient manuscripts, A University of Iowa-led research team is aiming to use AI to restore lost sections of ancient manuscripts, with support from a $500,000 grant from Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic organization that funds unconventional scientific research. Paul Dilley, the Erling B. "Jack" Holtsmark Associate Professor in the UI's Classics department and the departmental executive officer of the UI Department of Religious Studies, will train AI models for the next three years to suggest hidden characters in ancient texts. Dilley said many ancient texts are uncovered by happenstance, such as the Herculaneum papyri, a collection of thousands of ancient Roman scrolls carbonized by the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. "Often these texts aren't very well preserved," he said. "You need to take steps to make them legible again. Sometimes, those steps are difficult, as in the case of the Herculaneum papyri." Many ancient texts are filled with ink that has faded to the point where the naked eye can no longer discern it. "The first step in recovering these texts is usually some kind of enhanced imaging technique to try to make the ink appear more legible," Dilley said. "Multispectral imaging can make the traces of ink that are still left on the page really jump out." Dilley said he and his team will use multispectral imaging as a first step to identify ancient manuscripts, then bring AI to bridge any gaps. Honghai Zhang, a senior research scientist at the Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging - a multidisciplinary research initiative at UI that brings together different departments for medical imaging - used a similar form of multispectral imaging in a study analyzing medieval manuscripts. Zhang was part of a team that used medical CT scans, which use X-rays to take detailed images of the body, to look inside the books without opening them. "To extract hidden information from a damaged manuscript, parchment, or scroll, it's a huge effort," he said. "It involves the collaboration of people from different research fields." Zhang said the chemical buildup of the ink in a manuscript will play a large role in determining which scanner will best decipher the text. While Zhang's team used CT scans, others are using infrared-based scans, a process that takes several hours. "Imaging has been evolving and advancing for many years. Day in and day out, we're dealing with higher and higher resolutions," he said. "AI is also evolving, but using the combination of those two for ancient manuscripts is something new, which is interesting and challenging." Dilley said even as multispectral imaging continues to advance, there is a limit to what it can decipher. "If the manuscript has already been damaged, imaging obviously doesn't help you see the missing parts," he said. "That's where AI comes in." Dilley said editors will train the AI to perform a process called infilling, or suggesting restorations for letter fragments. Generative AI will also be used to infer and suggest new text for lacunas, or portions of manuscripts where all text is missing. For his current study, Dilley said the AI will be trained to perform infilling and restore lacuna for Greek, Latin, and Celtic languages. "The plan is to publish the models open access and to make it extendable to other languages," he said. "The basic pipeline should be extendable to other languages." Robert Cargill, the Roger A. Hornsby associate professor in the classics, said he and Dilley were hired at UI as part of a Digital Humanities Initiative in 2011, an emerging field that had just begun digitizing ancient texts and putting them in online libraries. Cargill said Dilley's new experimentation with AI is a similar instance of having the foresight to use emerging technology for studying the humanities. "There is some research that can be done without technology, and technology simply helps speed up the process," he said. "But there is other research, like the kind that Paul is doing, that just cannot be done without the help of technology and AI." Cargill said opening something like an ancient charred scroll would be impossible; simply, as it would crumble from frailty. With an AI algorithm that scans every layer and compares lines to a database of known letters in the ancient language, Cargill said such work is possible. "This is real research that 50 years ago we would have just called magic," he said. Cargill said Dilley's research, being conducted at Iowa, will help UI students learn about the emerging role of AI in the humanities, giving them a leg up in the job market. "The only other people doing it are nations. Israel is doing this with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that's an entire government," he said. "Countries that have massive budgets are doing this, and Professor Dilley is able to do it here at the University of Iowa with this grant." Dilley said as his team looks to integrate AI into the humanities, it is important to give scholars space to have the final say on what lost sections of ancient manuscripts could have been. "It's definitely not meant to replace traditional human language learning and engagement, but it can be a way to make potential breakthroughs in otherwise very difficult sections of a damaged manuscript," he said. "It's meant to be a great help, but not the final say." Support the daily iowan. The independent, student-run newsroom at the DI covers the University of Iowa and local community to keep you informed. Your support helps provide the necessary resources and training to continue our mission.