It’s the largest driver of non-defense Artificial Intelligence R&D in the nation, and invests more than $500-million into the technology each year, according to the White House. Now the National Science Foundation (NSF) is establishing seven research institutes committed to AI research. The centers will be focused on machine-learning, synthetic manufacturing, precision agriculture, and forecasting prediction. But is that enough? Additional investment is beneficial, but more is needed to keep up with AI spending in other nations.
The new U.S. institutes are receiving $140-million in awards from the NSF, and will receive further funds from partner agencies in 12-months. The White House says the AI centers will accelerate discovery and innovation, promote job creation and workforce development, with “a strong emphasis on training, education, and outreach to help Americans of all backgrounds, ages, and skill levels participate in our 21st-century economy.”
The NSF is partnering with academia to bring the vision to life. The University of California at Davis is one of the universities that will undertake AI research under the new grant. Other institutions include the University of Oklahoma Norman, University of Texas Austin, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Earlier this month the Trump administration announced it plans to spend more on AI in 2021 than it did in 2020. The budget increase needs to be approved by Congress to take effect, but the White House says it wants to increase AI funding from $1.2-billion to $1.5-billion. Further increases have been touted for 2022, taking the annual spend on AI to $2-billion. The additional funds are a step in the right direction to accelerate U.S. AI funding to be in the same ballpark as that of other nations. One country, however, has funding that is in another stratosphere.
China spent between around $10-billion on AI-related R&D in 2018, according to a new report by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The report discloses that it does not have complete data and its assessment is an estimate. “We believe China’s government probably spent a few billion dollars—and at most, closer to 10 billion dollars—on AI-related R&D in 2018, with basic research comprising a small fraction of the total.” While this figure is high, and certainly higher than the contribution that the U.S. is making, it is considerably lower than the $70-billion that has been reported previously regarding the amount China is investing in AI.
“There’s no doubt that competitors such as China are making serious investments and strategies in an effort to wrest AI and quantum computing leadership,” Stephen Ezell, vice president of innovation policy at an independent policy think tank told the Wall Street Journal.
The Department of Energy (DOE) also announced this week that it is contributing funds to emerging technologies. Five new centers will be set up to advance quantum information science (QIS.) Those centers are focused on quantum networking, sensing, computing, and materials manufacturing and will be based in DOE National Laboratories teams at Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermi, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. The White House says that together the funds for the AI and QIS centers are more than a billion dollars.
“It is absolutely imperative the United States continues to lead the world in AI and quantum,” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios told the Wall Street Journal. “The future of American economic prosperity and national security will be shaped by how we invest, research, develop and deploy these cutting-edge technologies today.”