The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the Department of Energy (DoE), today awarded 35 projects first-round access to the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, which is a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community.
NSF first launched the NAIRR pilot in January, meeting a requirement set by President Biden’s AI executive order. As part of the pilot launch, NSF and DoE invited the research community to apply for access to a set of advanced computing resources for projects focused on advancing safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.
“Today marks a pivotal moment in the advancement of AI research as we announce the first round of NAIRR pilot projects. The NAIRR pilot, fueled by the need to advance responsible AI research and broaden access to cutting-edge resources needed for AI research, symbolizes a firm stride towards democratizing access to vital AI tools across the talented communities in all corners of our country,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.
“While this is only the first step in our NAIRR efforts, we plan to rapidly expand our partnerships and secure the level of investments needed to realize the NAIRR vision and unlock the full potential of AI for the benefit of humanity and society,” Panchanathan added.
Of the 35 projects granted first-round access to the NAIRR, 27 will be supported through resources on NSF-funded advanced computing systems. These include Delta at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Frontera and Lonestar at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and the Neocortex system at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
The remaining eight projects will have access to DoE-supported systems, including the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the AI Testbed at Argonne National Laboratory.
The projects granted computing access in this initial round represent a wide range of AI-related areas, including research into language model safety and security, privacy and federated models, and privacy-preserving synthetic data generation.
During an event at the White House today, Panchanathan said the projects include a variety of AI applications, “ranging from permafrost monitoring, or medical imaging, or agriculture pest detection.”
“You will see, among these 35 projects, an unbelievable span in terms of geography, in terms of core ideas, as well as application interests,” Panchanathan said.
“And I can tell you, the appetite is pretty strong. We have 50 projects, which have been reviewed as positive already. But, we don’t have the resources to be able to scale to the 50 projects yet,” he added. “This is just the beginning. There is so much need. And so, we need more resources to be brought to the table.”
The NSF director stressed that this is just a pilot, and thanked Congress for its bipartisan work to try to codify the NAIRR and attach it to a permanent source of funding.
As part of today’s announcement, the NAIRR pilot also opened the next opportunity for researchers and educators to apply for access to resources that support AI research.
The second round will include resources contributed by the pilot’s nongovernmental partners, including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, SambaNova Systems, Cerebras, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, EleutherAI, OpenMined, Hugging Face, and Vocareum.
It will also include access to resources from additional NSF advanced computing platforms at Purdue University, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – just to name a few.
Interested researchers and educators can apply for access to these resources and learn more about the first cohort projects on the NAIRR pilot website.
“Under President Biden’s leadership, we are expanding access to critical data and compute so that more and more people can benefit from responsible AI technology,” said Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Arati Prabhakar. “NAIRR will advance research to develop trustworthy technology that strengthens our values and helps us overcome the great challenges of our times.”
