White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Arati Prabhakar called on Congress Tuesday to provide billions in funding for the government’s National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) so that AI development does not become reliant on the biggest tech companies.
During POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit on Tuesday afternoon, Prabhakar stressed the importance of Federal research and development (R&D) in AI.
“What’s happening today is an extraordinary moment, where a huge surge in a powerful technology is coming largely from a few large tech companies,” Prabhakar said. “It’s built on many, many decades of research in AI, much of which was publicly funded. But this particular surge has come from the hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars that a very small number of big tech companies have put in.”
“There’s a lot of good in what’s happening, but by itself, it’s not going to get us where we need to go,” she warned. “We need to complement that now with the federally funded research that provides a foundation of basic research under the practical things that are happening in industry.”
Prabhakar explained that federally funded research is necessary so that “we know how to evaluate an AI system” and ensure its safe and responsible use.
Additionally, she said that “everything that we need from AI is going to require public investment in AI R&D” – from better health outcomes to faster deployment of clean energy.
The Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with AI Act (CREATE AI Act) recently passed out of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, as well as the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
This bill would make permanent the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) NAIRR pilot, which the agency officially launched on Jan. 24. The NAIRR – mandated by President Biden’s October 2023 AI executive order – serves as a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community and power responsible AI use.
The CREATE AI Act, which contains a funding clause of $2.6 billion for the NAIRR “is exactly what we have to have to get started,” Prabhakar said.
“I want to be really clear that $2.6 billion is so much better than a few tens of millions, which is all we’ve got right now to get started in a pilot. So, it’s an important advance, but I think everyone here knows how many billions of dollars are being spent to build these AI models,” Prabhakar said. “I think we also need to be clear that we’ve got to get NAIRR done, but it’s only the beginning.”
