# Towards Automated Scoping of AI for Social Good Projects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.20010 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20010/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06292/) (2024)
- [Can LLMs Express Their Uncertainty? An Empirical Evaluation of Confidence Elicitation in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13063/) (2023)
- [LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13076/) (2024)
- [Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04109/) (2024)
- [Draft, Sketch, and Prove: Guiding Formal Theorem Provers with Informal Proofs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12283/) (2022)
- [DeepSeek-Prover: Advancing Theorem Proving in LLMs through Large-Scale Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14333/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models are Inconsistent and Biased Evaluators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01724/) (2024)
- [InfiAgent-DABench: Evaluating Agents on Data Analysis Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05507/) (2024)
- [Proof Artifact Co-training for Theorem Proving with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06203/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models for Automated Open-domain Scientific Hypotheses Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02726/) (2023)
- [Thor: Wielding Hammers to Integrate Language Models and Automated Theorem Provers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10893/) (2022)
- [BLADE: Benchmarking Language Model Agents for Data-Driven Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09667/) (2024)
- [MLR-Copilot: Autonomous Machine Learning Research based on Large Language Models Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14033/) (2024)
- [Autonomous LLM-driven research from data to human-verifiable research papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17605/) (2024)
- [IdeaSynth: Iterative Research Idea Development Through Evolving and Composing Idea Facets with Literature-Grounded Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04025/) (2024)
- [Human-LLM Compound System for Scientific Ideation through Facet Recombination and Novelty Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14634/) (2024)
- [Artificial Intelligence for Social Good: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01818/) (2020)
- [Conversational Agents as Catalysts for Critical Thinking: Challenging Design Fixation in Group Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11125/) (2024)
- [Can Language Models Explain Their Own Classification Behavior?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07436/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Toward Personalized LLM-Powered Agents: Foundations, Evaluation, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22680/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial Intelligence for Social Good (AI4SG) is an emerging effort that aims to address complex societal challenges with the powerful capabilities of AI systems. These challenges range from local issues with transit networks to global wildlife preservation. However, regardless of scale, a critical bottleneck for many AI4SG initiatives is the laborious process of problem scoping -- a complex and resource-intensive task -- due to a scarcity of professionals with both technical and domain expertise. Given the remarkable applications of large language models (LLM), we propose a Problem Scoping Agent (PSA) that uses an LLM to generate comprehensive project proposals grounded in scientific literature and real-world knowledge. We demonstrate that our PSA framework generates proposals comparable to those written by experts through a blind review and AI evaluations. Finally, we document the challenges of real-world problem scoping and note several areas for future work.