Schmidt Sciences Awards $11M in Grants to Bring AI to Humanities Research (HAVI 2025)

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schmidtsciences.org·schmidtsciences.org/havi-2025-announcement/

This press release announces Schmidt Sciences' $11M HAVI grant program applying AI to humanities research. While not directly about AI safety, it illustrates AI capability expansion into new domains and raises questions about AI model development for specialized, low-resource contexts.

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Summary

Schmidt Sciences has awarded $11 million to up to 23 research teams worldwide through its Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) to develop and apply AI to archaeology, history, literature, and other humanities disciplines. The program addresses challenges of applying AI to ancient languages, 3D artifacts, and small datasets. A second round of applications is open with a March 2026 deadline.

Key Points

•Schmidt Sciences awarded $11M to up to 23 teams to apply AI to humanities research including archaeology, history, and literature.
•HAVI addresses the gap between AI models trained on modern data and humanities research involving ancient languages and small datasets.
•Projects include AI models for medieval manuscripts, film narrative analysis, archaeological site discovery, and reading damaged ancient scrolls.
•A next round of HAVI applications is open with a deadline of March 13, 2026.
•The program argues AI can advance rather than destroy humanities scholarship by opening new avenues of inquiry.

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 AI & Advanced Computing

 Schmidt Sciences awards $11M in grants to bring AI to humanities research

 
 Dec 11, 2025 

 
 
 
 
 
 Contact : Carlie Wiener;   [email&#160;protected] 

 NEW YORK —Schmidt Sciences has awarded $11 million for up to 23 teams of researchers around the world to develop and apply artificial intelligence to archaeology, history, literature and other humanities disciplines, seeking to unlock new understandings of human history and culture, the organization announced today.  

 “Our newest technologies may shed light on our oldest truths, on all that makes us human—from the origins of civilization to the peaks of philosophical thought to contemporary art and film,” said Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Sciences. “Schmidt Sciences’ Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) is poised to change not only the course of scholarship, but also the way we see ourselves and our role in the world.”  

 Humanities scholars have a hard time using AI models because those models are trained on massive amounts of contemporary data, modern languages, and two-dimensional media, whereas humanities research often involves ancient or lesser-spoken languages, three-dimensional artifacts, art made from a variety of materials, and relatively small amounts of ambiguous and culture-specific information. The Schmidt Sciences’s HAVI program will support researchers to create new AI models or evolve existing ones to open new avenues for historical understanding and inquiry.  

 Researchers will, for example, create AI models that can answer questions from the perspective of a particular historical place and time, analyze how camera movement and soundtracks shape narrative in film, explore how changes in trade routes or technology affect art and literature, search for new, buried archaeological sites and even virtually unwind ancient scrolls or read illegible, torn, shorthand manuscripts. Their work will range across geographies and millennia, from industrial England to Qing-era China to ancient Egypt.  

 “Rather than destroying the humanities, as many have feared, AI has a role in advancing the humanities, opening new avenues of scholarship,” said Brent Seales, a University of Kentucky professor who leads HAVI. “Computational methods have been a part of the study of humanities for decades, and it’s time to explore how to integrate AI into this essential scholarship.”     

 The teams were selected after multiple rounds of review by Schmidt Sciences and external experts. They join two inaugural awards from HAVI granted earlier this year—one to the Sorbonne University in Paris to study the artworks of Eugene Delacroix and a second to EduceLab, a first-of-its-kind, next-gen heritage science user facility that applies AI, micro-CT imaging, and other high-tech instrumentation to the study of cultural heritage artifacts. 

 Today, Schmidt Sciences is also announcing the next round of this program , with an application due date o

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