The director of the U.S. National Science Foundation on the future of AI

In an editorial, Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), calls for the responsible and equitable development of artificial intelligence (AI) and promises to use the agency’s resources to work toward democratizing AI research. NSF spends $800 million on AI research in the public interest each year. Panchanathan summarizes some of the benefits AI can offer to scientific research—from accelerating discovery to automating routine tasks—but emphasizes that AI must be safe and accessible. Toward that end, NSF and its partners launched the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot in January, the first step toward a shared national research infrastructure that will make AI computational resources, data, software, training, and education widely available to US researchers. NAIRR will help shape a future where AI catalyzes equitable growth, ethical innovation, and global collaboration. Panchanathan also calls for the AI community to incorporate a broad range of perspectives, backgrounds, and problem-solving approaches, as such a diverse AI ecosystem will be more likely to create transparent and trustworthy AI systems. Panchanathan concludes that responsibly democratizing AI research is imperative for ensuring AI’s benefits are broadly and fairly realized. 

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