On January 24th, 2024, the NSF’s National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) working group released a Request for Information to, “gather current and anticipated research and education use cases for the NAIRR Pilot and to also identify current and anticipated challenges and barriers that researchers and educators may face in accessing and using AI resources and tools for their activities”.   The field of AI is evolving at a breathtaking pace, becoming increasingly integral to various research domains and educational settings. However, accessing large-scale computing resources, AI-ready datasets, and pretrained models, which are necessary to conduct AI research, can be a significant barrier to entry for researchers, educators, and students. […]

This week the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force released a roadmap to establish a national research infrastructure aimed to broaden access to resources for AI research and development. There are ever increasing opportunities to work with cutting-edge AI technologies, but many of the opportunities are limited to large companies, organizations and academic institutions with an abundance of resources. The implementation plan, Strengthening and Democratizing the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem, aims to provide AI researchers and students with access to computational resources, high-quality data, training tools, and user support. The report lays out the following goals for the NAIRR: Provide AI researchers and students with significantly expanded […]

The National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force convened its third virtual public meeting to further develop a vision and implementation plan for the NAIRR. Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Ian Foster (Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago), was invited to speak about the recently published A National Discovery Cloud: Preparing the US for Global Competitiveness in the New Era of 21st Century Digital Transformation white paper.  In addition, 84 responses from industry, academia, and government stakeholders were recently released regarding the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation request for information to develop an implementation roadmap for the NAIRR. […]

In July, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation released a Request For Information (RFI) to gather public input on the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) implementation plan. The deadline has been extended, to October 1st, to hopefully elicit more diverse responses. “Given that we want to hear from as many folks as possible — we’d really like a broad and diverse set of perspectives among the responses — we felt it best to extend the RFI response date by a month,” Erwin Gianchandani, who co-chairs the task force as NSF’s representative, told FedScoop in an article. “We believe that timeline will maximize responses while still allowing us to […]