AI is making waves in many fields, including grant writing, with its ability to quickly generate content.
With AI on everyone’s radar, can AI write a grant funding application? While AI can be a helpful tool, it falls short in several crucial areas where human expertise is indispensable.
1. Understanding Nuance and Context:
Grant writing isn’t just about following a template; it’s about telling a compelling story that aligns with the funder’s values. Humans can grasp the nuanced context of a project, anticipate concerns, and tailor the narrative to highlight unique aspects—something AI struggles with.
2. Emotional Intelligence and Persuasion:
A successful grant application needs more than just facts; it needs to connect on an emotional level. Human writers bring empathy and passion to their proposals, crafting narratives that resonate with reviewers, whereas AI lacks genuine emotional intelligence.
3. Adaptability and Problem-Solving:
Grant writing often requires flexibility to adapt to changes or feedback. Human writers can think critically and creatively, refining the application as needed. AI, while good with structured data, struggles with ambiguity and the need for on-the-fly problem-solving.
4. Customisation and Personalisation:
Every grant application is unique. Human writers can draw from their experience to tailor each proposal to the specific funder’s needs. AI-generated content tends to be more generic and less personalised, missing opportunities to stand out.
5. Ethical Considerations:
Using AI to generate grant applications raises concerns about authenticity. Funders expect applications to reflect the genuine ideas of the applicant. Over-reliance on AI could lead to generic, homogenized proposals that lack originality.
6. Building Relationships:
Grant writing is also about fostering long-term relationships with funders. Human writers can communicate directly with funding organisations, building trust and rapport—an area where AI simply cannot compete.
Wait …. Everything to this point was AI generated (ChatGPT v4.0, “write a blog on why humans are better grant writers than AI”, August 2024). Despite being quick to throw itself under the bus, the AI content isn’t terrible. It makes a clear argument, with several points to illustrate it and the layout is accessible and easy to read. The content was generated within a matter of seconds, giving me the opportunity to quickly score the “write a grants related blog” task from my to do list.
Is AI good enough?
It depends on what it’s being used for and what’s come before. For the question posed there was a good volume of reasonable content, because other (humans) have tackled the topic and there were several articles online for the AI to draw inspiration from. The conclusions drawn by AI fully mirror this and, unsurprisingly, can’t add anything new or insightful. For some outputs this will do but not in the context of successful grant application writing were conveying unique ideas concisely is key. As the internet becomes flooded with more AI generated content, will the outputs become even more uniform and bland?
As someone who enjoys learning about technology and seeing it progress, I will watch as the AI story continues to unfold. I’ll make use of the tools it gives enthusiastically but I can’t help but wonder what the future looks like if AI does became able to write grant applications? Would all applications be written by AI? How will assessors differentiate, and will they still be human?
For today, writing a grant funding application relies on lived experience, idea sharing, and creativity, which cannot be automated. As grant writers, we must speak to the assessors and convince. So, just like in writing this blog, AI got things started but it’s not ready to be the final word.
By Clare Fairfield, Grant Consultant at Medilink Midlands Patron TBAT Innovation
