Section one: Contracting authority
one.1) Name and addresses
ADVANCED RESEARCH AND INVENTION AGENCY
96 EUSTON ROAD,
LONDON
NW12DB
Country
United Kingdom
Region code
UKI31 - Camden and City of London
Justification for not providing organisation identifier
Not on any register
Internet address(es)
Main address
Buyer's address
https://www.aria.org.uk/programme-safeguarded-ai/
one.3) Communication
Additional information can be obtained from the above-mentioned address
one.4) Type of the contracting authority
Other type
Non departmental body
one.5) Main activity
General public services
Section two: Object
two.1) Scope of the procurement
two.1.1) Title
ARIA Safeguarded AI: Technical Area 3 Applications
two.1.2) Main CPV code
- 73000000 - Research and development services and related consultancy services
two.1.3) Type of contract
Services
two.1.4) Short description
About the programme
Backed by £59M, ARIA's programme 'Safeguarded AI' explores if it's possible to formally verify the safety of AI systems through quantitative methods-specifically, exploring a possible pathway for developing a "gatekeeper" AI to understand the real-world interactions and consequences of an autonomous AI agent, and ensure it only operates within agreed-upon guardrails for a given application.
The programme is split into three Technical Areas (TAs) which will:
- TA1 (Scaffolding) build an extendable, interoperable language and platform to maintain real-world models/specifications and check proof certificates.
- TA2 (Machine learning) use frontier AI to help domain experts build best-in-class mathematical models for real-world complex dynamics and leverage frontier AI to train autonomous systems
- TA3 (Applications) unlock significant economic value with quantitative safety guarantees by deploying a gatekeeper-safeguarded autonomous AI system in a critical cyber-physical operating context.
two.1.6) Information about lots
This contract is divided into lots: No
two.2) Description
two.2.2) Additional CPV code(s)
- 38970000 - Research, testing and scientific technical simulator
- 48000000 - Software package and information systems
two.2.3) Place of performance
NUTS codes
- UK - United Kingdom
two.2.4) Description of the procurement
About TA3
Through TA3, we will look to demonstrate a 'gatekeeper' workflow that could be used to create and maintain decision-support tools and/or safeguard autonomous AI systems to solve specific, economically valuable challenges.
As part of this work, teams will elicit functional and non-functional requirements from customers for a proposed product, then outline simplified versions for very concrete use cases. These specifications will serve as the benchmark evaluations for our entire research programme, as we'll look to develop AI systems specifically tailored to solve them.
A full set of applications will be determined after the TA3 solicitation, but some applications we're currently considering include: energy system optimisation; infectious disease epidemiology, climate and weather prediction; aircraft and spaceflight dynamics; and control systems for robots in human environments.
two.2.14) Additional information
Detail on TA3 solicitation:
In early summer, we will launch a solicitation for TA3, in which we're looking for individuals or existing entities (including start-ups, SMEs, non-profits, large companies) interested in using our gatekeeper AI workflow to build safeguarded products for specific tasks.
The solicitation will run in two phases:
Phase one: In the initial phase, we'll distribute funding to deeply understand customer needs and elicit requirements, this may include: sourcing datasets, designing evaluation suites to validate the performance of predictive models and autonomous or semi-autonomous controllers.
Phase two: Successful teams (estimated 2-4 groups total) will then advance to the second phase, where they will receive significant funding to apply the tools developed in the other Technical Areas to their application domain. Our thesis Safeguarded AI: constructing guaranteed safety (https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ARIA-Safeguarded-AI-Programme-Thesis-V1.pdf) gives a detailed overview of how this workstream compliments the whole programme.
ARIA Creators (recipients of ARIA's funding), gain access to the programme's research community, ARIA's programme leadership and wider community.
two.3) Estimated date of publication of contract notice
31 July 2024
Section four. Procedure
four.1) Description
four.1.8) Information about the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)
The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: No