Elon Musk-backed and Boston-based Future of Life Institute recently announced a list of 37 research teams who are winners of research grants that will be given to them to carry out research in the field of artificial intelligence.

These are driven by concerns raised by personalities such as Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates that humans are presently not completely prepared to deal with unwanted circumstances caused by machines.

The grants ranging in size from $20,000 to $1.5 million are part of a bigger plan to prevent artificial intelligence from wrecking the planet.

Researchers at the least hope that the ideas and concepts explored by the winning research teams might help to prevent some of the unintended” and “disastrous” consequences hinted at by the Future of Life Institute. These consequences might include robot homicides in factories or road collisions involving self-driving cars.

Here are a few ideas that could prevent artificial intelligence from wrecking earth:

• By keeping highly-advanced weapon systems completely under human control: Researchers at the Future of Life Institute admit that there is a high need to make certain that super-smart autonomous weapons systems do not start overriding their human masters in the future.

• Making the AI systems to explain their decisions to humans in excruciating detail before taking a step further: Professor Manuela Veloso of Carnegie Mellon University suggests that the only way to make AI systems truly accepted and trusted is if they make them completely transparent in their decision-making process.

Some other key steps that could prevent AI from harming earth include aligning interests of machines and humans; teaching machines about human behaviors and values; ensuring an economic future where humans still have jobs.