The National Science Foundation (NSF) is taking swift action to meet the requirements set forth by President Biden’s recent artificial intelligence executive order (EO), including by establishing four additional National AI Research Institutes and launching a pilot program to implement the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR).
At a media roundtable today, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said that NSF has invested in AI technologies for quite some time, but the recent EO has helped to accelerate the agency’s progress.
“The AI of today has been made possible by five to six decades of investments by NSF,” Panchanathan said. “If you look at AI work, even in the last three years, we have launched 25 AI Institutes – each of them $20 million scale, a half a billion dollar investment.”
The director said that of the 25 National AI Research Institutes – which are located across the country – 15 of them are funded through NSF. The other 10, he said, are funded through partnerships.
“This is how we are moving forward: partnership, partnership, partnership. Not only what NSF does through its own investments, but also partnering with every possible entity,” Panchanathan said. “That’s what NSF does best is unleash these possibilities.”
Currently, NSF has AI Research Institutes that focus on topics such as AI use in agriculture, education, and science, as well as one specific to trustworthy AI. The AI EO calls on NSF to establish four new AI Institutes, in addition to the existing 25.
Michael Littman, NSF’s division director for information and intelligent systems, said that the new institutes will include “an institute on astronomy, on material science, and also on strengthening AI more broadly.”
“We’ve had these 25 existing institutes, and we’re going to have at least four more relevant to the executive order,” Littman told reporters. “The idea is to move AI research forward, within use-inspired contexts to really understand how this can have an impact on society more generally.”
Additionally, the AI EO directed NSF to launch the NAIRR pilot program within 90 days. This program aims to be a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community with access to data sets, computing, models, and training resources.
“The aim here is really to broaden, to expand, and democratize access to these resources with the goal of advancing the R&D ecosystem and accelerating AI innovation in a manner that lives up to the values of our country,” said Katie Antypas, director of NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.
The NAIRR is envisioned to be a $2.6 billion program, but Antypas said that NSF plans to establish the initial pilot program the week of January 21, 2024.
The goal of the pilot, she said, is to demonstrate the value of the NAIRR concept to the AI research community and engage with stakeholders to get a “jumpstart on designing the NAIRR.”
“It’s initially going to be modest because we are bringing together these resources very quickly. We are directed to launch a pilot with the resources that we have in hand and our existing authority, as well as with in-kind contributions from different technology companies,” Antypas said. “So, we’re incredibly excited about that launch that’s coming up.”
“Right now, we have multiple agencies that are working together. So, the EO is really this galvanizing force that gives us a deadline and it’s, I think, helping us move more quickly,” she added.
