SCIENTISTS AT MIT DISCOVER TECH BROS WILL FUND LITERALLY ANYTHING WITH “AI” IN THE TITLE
In what witnesses describe as “the academic equivalent of thirst-trapping venture capitalists,” MIT’s newly formed Generative AI Impact Consortium has announced funding for 55 proposals that slapped “AI” onto previously mundane research projects.
DESPERATE ACADEMICS PERFORM LINGUISTIC GYMNASTICS TO SECURE FUNDING
“We received 180 submissions from nearly 250 faculty members who suddenly realized their life’s work could be rebranded with generative AI buzzwords,” said Dr. Grant M. Oney, MIT’s Chief Buzzword Implementation Officer. “It’s f@#king beautiful to watch professors who’ve spent decades studying mosquito migration patterns suddenly discover their work is actually ‘AI-driven insect trajectory optimization.'”
UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS SHOCKED WHEN STRATEGY ACTUALLY WORKS
The consortium, launched in February with support from tech companies desperate to look innovative while their stock prices plummet, has been hailed as “a brilliant way to relabel existing research projects while extracting millions from Silicon Valley panic-donors.”
“I’ve been studying paint drying for 15 years,” admitted Professor Ima Sellout. “But now that I’ve renamed it ‘Temporal-Spatial Large Language Modeling of Viscous Fluid Dynamics,’ I’ve got funding coming out of my a$$.”
INDUSTRY PARTNERS PRAISE INITIATIVE WHILE SECRETLY GOOGLING WHAT THE PROJECTS ACTUALLY DO
Corporate partners, including companies whose executives can’t define machine learning but mention it in every earnings call, expressed enthusiasm for the initiative.
“We’re thrilled to support MIT’s groundbreaking work in… *checks notes*… GenAI-something-something,” said Chad Moneybags, Chief Innovation Officer at TechCorp. “This partnership allows us to put ‘AI research’ in our annual report without actually understanding a sh!t about it.”
ACTUAL USEFUL APPLICATIONS DISCOVERED BY ACCIDENT
Among the funded proposals was “AI-Driven Tutors for Early Literacy,” which researchers describe as “teaching kids to read, but with computers” and “GENIUS: GENerative Intelligence for Urban Sustainability,” which translates to “using computers to check if your city’s climate plan is bulls#!t.”
In perhaps the most honest proposal, “jam_bots” aims to create AI musicians who can improvise alongside humans, finally answering the age-old question: “What if your band member was literally incapable of having an ego?”
STATISTICS SHOW 97% OF RESEARCHERS ADDED “AI” TO PROPOSAL TITLES AT THE LAST MINUTE
University statistics reveal that approximately 97% of researchers added “AI,” “generative,” or “large language model” to their grant proposals within 24 hours of the submission deadline. The remaining 3% were from the philosophy department, who are still trying to determine if computers can ever truly “know” anything.
“I just did a find-and-replace on my old grant,” confessed one anonymous researcher. “Anywhere it said ‘computer program’ I changed it to ‘advanced generative AI system.’ Boom, three million dollars.”
At press time, MIT announced plans for next year’s “Blockchain Quantum Web3 Metaverse Impact Consortium,” expected to fund another 55 identical projects with different buzzwords.
