Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has made enormous strides in recent years, becoming increasingly ubiquitous and driving significant economic and social changes worldwide. For such progress to continue, it is pivotal that the computing community continues to recognize and produce high-quality AI research. However, that is easier said than done, as there are many stressors on the current ecosystem — stressors that are in dire need of community discussion and action to ensure that reliable, effective, safe and responsible AI research advances can occur.

To that end, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) AI Research Ecosystem (AIRE) team, with support from the National Science Foundation, is excited to announce the launch of a new, public discussion forum designed to better understand AI research needs: Pillars of the AI Research Ecosystem. 

Better Understanding the AI Research Ecosystem

This discussion forum features a series of key components (aka “pillars”) of the AI research ecosystem that we invite members of the computing community to share their views on, indicating on a sliding scale which ones are currently experiencing the most pressure. These pillars represent different aspects of the research process, like funding, peer review, and translation.

Some other topics we’re seeking insight on are:

• The academia-industry research and talent pipeline
• The publication environment
• Interdisciplinary research spaces
• Public-private partnerships
• Resource accessibility
• Intellectual property
• The pace of advancement

Not every research barrier may be cleanly encapsulated in one of these areas. Therefore, the AIRE discussion forum allows users to submit their own pillars indicating other areas they believe are facing stress in the current AI research environment.

Once you’ve shared your own responses, you can then see the anonymized assessments of the rest of the community. We hope these polls will represent the broad range of perspectives of stakeholders in the AI research ecosystem across academia, industry, government agencies, and NGOs.

Shaping the Future of AI Research

This discussion forum is a rare chance to make your voice heard and truly shape the world of AI research. The responses will help inform a series of virtual roundtable discussions as well as a multi-day CCC workshop with experts in the field as they hone in on the biggest challenges the AI research community faces. They will then use the perspectives demonstrated on the forum as they put together a workshop report released publicly by CCC, that maps out resources and strategies to help address those challenges. Ultimately, your response helps ensure that trustworthy and effective AI advances can occur, guided by the needs of the community.

CCC is enthusiastic about this opportunity to engage with the community and solicit a broad range of perspectives. We look forward to receiving your contributions soon!

Make Your Voice Heard Here >>>

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Award No. 2300842. This award supports the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a programmatic committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA).

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.