Unlike other countries, the US government does not have a coordinated national strategy to increase AI investment or respond to the societal challenges of AI. During the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency, the White House laid the foundation for a US strategy in three separate reports. The first report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, made specific recommendations related to AI regulations, public R&D, automation, ethics and fairness, and security. Its companion report, National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, outlined a strategic plan for publicly funded R&D in AI, while the final report, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, examined in further detail the impact of automation and what policies are needed to increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs.
President Trump’s White House has taken a markedly different, free market-oriented approach to AI. In May 2018, the White House invited industry, academia, and government representatives to a summit on AI.
Michael Kratsios, Deputy Assistant to the President for Technology Policy, outlined the President’s approach to AI. He announced the government has four goals:
(1) maintain American leadership in AI,
(2) support the American worker,
(3) promote public R&D, and
(4) remove barriers to innovation.
According to a report by Govini, in its 2017 unclassified budget, the Pentagon spent approximately $7.4 billion on AI and the fields that support it, such as big data and cloud computing. This is up from $5.6 billion in 2012. The US military also invests billions more in classified R&D, but it is unknown how much this figure is. In June 2018, the Pentagon announced a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center that will have oversight over the majority of service and defense agency AI efforts.
Why the US needs an AI Strategy?
Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research and streams of foreign talent have put America at the forefront of the current AI boom.
Yet as AI aspirations have sprouted around the globe, the US government has lacked a high-level strategy to guide American investment and prepare for the technology’s effects.
To turn ideas into reality, we need infrastructure. For AI, that means data, models, and computational resources. Under the American AI Initiative, federal agencies will increase access to their resources to drive AI research by identifying high-priority federal data and models, improving public access to and the quality of federal AI data, and allocating high-performance and cloud computing resources to AI-related applications and R&D.
The National Artificial Intelligence R&D Strategic Plan establishes a set of objectives for Federally-funded AI research, both research occurring within the government as well as Federally-funded research occurring outside of government, such as in academia. The ultimate goal of this research is to produce new AI knowledge and technologies that provide a range of positive benefits to society while minimizing the negative impacts.
“Accelerating America’s Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, will direct agencies to prioritize AI investments in research and development, increase access to federal data and models for that research and prepare workers to adapt to the era of AI.”
President Trump signed an executive order creating a program called the American AI Initiative. It doesn’t include new funding or specific AI projects. But it orders the federal government to direct existing funds, programs, and data in support of AI research and commercialization.
“AI has really become a transformative technology that’s changing industries, markets, and society,” says Lynne Parker, who leads work on AI in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “There are a number of actions that are needed to help us harness AI for the good of the American people.”
One element of the Trump administration plan would open some stocks of government data to academics and companies doing AI research. Tech companies such as Google parent Alphabet have plenty of 1s and 0s logging consumer habits stashed inside their data centers; but in other areas, such as health care, they struggle to amass the data needed to fuel AI projects.
The plan Trump signed also directs federal agencies to prioritize AI when allocating their R&D budgets. It asks them to support training and fellowship programs that will help workers adjust to jobs changed by AI and to train future AI experts and researchers.
The White House is drafting a memo that will lay out details of the implementation of the new initiative, due within six months.
Unlike other countries, the US government does not have a coordinated national strategy to increase AI investment or respond to the societal challenges of AI. During the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency, the White House laid the foundation for a US strategy in three separate reports. The first report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, made specific recommendations related to AI regulations, public R&D, automation, ethics and fairness, and security. Its companion report, National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, outlined a strategic plan for publicly funded R&D in AI, while the final report, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, examined in further detail the impact of automation and what policies are needed to increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs.
President Trump’s White House has taken a markedly different, free market-oriented approach to AI. In May 2018, the White House invited industry, academia, and government representatives to a summit on AI.
Michael Kratsios, Deputy Assistant to the President for Technology Policy, outlined the President’s approach to AI. He announced the government has four goals:
(1) maintain American leadership in AI,
(2) support the American worker,
(3) promote public R&D, and
(4) remove barriers to innovation.
According to a report by Govini, in its 2017 unclassified budget, the Pentagon spent approximately $7.4 billion on AI and the fields that support it, such as big data and cloud computing. This is up from $5.6 billion in 2012. The US military also invests billions more in classified R&D, but it is unknown how much this figure is. In June 2018, the Pentagon announced a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center that will have oversight over the majority of service and defense agency AI efforts.
Why the US needs an AI Strategy?
Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research and streams of foreign talent have put America at the forefront of the current AI boom.
Yet as AI aspirations have sprouted around the globe, the US government has lacked a high-level strategy to guide American investment and prepare for the technology’s effects.
To turn ideas into reality, we need infrastructure. For AI, that means data, models, and computational resources. Under the American AI Initiative, federal agencies will increase access to their resources to drive AI research by identifying high-priority federal data and models, improving public access to and the quality of federal AI data, and allocating high-performance and cloud computing resources to AI-related applications and R&D.
The National Artificial Intelligence R&D Strategic Plan establishes a set of objectives for Federally-funded AI research, both research occurring within the government as well as Federally-funded research occurring outside of government, such as in academia. The ultimate goal of this research is to produce new AI knowledge and technologies that provide a range of positive benefits to society while minimizing the negative impacts.
“Accelerating America’s Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, will direct agencies to prioritize AI investments in research and development, increase access to federal data and models for that research and prepare workers to adapt to the era of AI.”
President Trump signed an executive order creating a program called the American AI Initiative. It doesn’t include new funding or specific AI projects. But it orders the federal government to direct existing funds, programs, and data in support of AI research and commercialization.
“AI has really become a transformative technology that’s changing industries, markets, and society,” says Lynne Parker, who leads work on AI in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “There are a number of actions that are needed to help us harness AI for the good of the American people.”
One element of the Trump administration plan would open some stocks of government data to academics and companies doing AI research. Tech companies such as Google parent Alphabet have plenty of 1s and 0s logging consumer habits stashed inside their data centers; but in other areas, such as health care, they struggle to amass the data needed to fuel AI projects.
The plan Trump signed also directs federal agencies to prioritize AI when allocating their R&D budgets. It asks them to support training and fellowship programs that will help workers adjust to jobs changed by AI and to train future AI experts and researchers.
The White House is drafting a memo that will lay out details of the implementation of the new initiative, due within six months.
