White House Executive Order Prioritizes AI for R&D Budgets

The Heads of the various agencies of the US Federal Government have been directed via an executive order to prioritize Artificial Intelligence for funding with their Research and Development budgets.

It is not clear how this will alter the roughly $150 billion per year of US Federal Government research and development budgets. There are no specific targeted funding. There is the request for people controlling budgets to free up and re-allocate funds for AI.

China, South Korea, France, the USA and other nations have specifically budgeted AI funding. China at the provincial and national level has ramped up AI funding by large amounts in recent years.

Here is some of the relevant instructions:
…agencies that also perform or fund R&D (AI R&D agencies), shall consider AI as an agency R&D priority, as appropriate to their respective agencies’ missions, consistent with applicable law and in accordance with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) R&D priorities memoranda. Heads of such agencies shall take this priority into account when developing budget proposals and planning for the use of funds in Fiscal Year 2020 and in future years. Heads of these agencies shall also consider appropriate administrative actions to increase focus on AI for 2019.

Sec. 5. Data and Computing Resources for AI Research and Development.

(a) Heads of all agencies shall review their Federal data and models to identify opportunities to increase access and use by the greater non-Federal AI research community in a manner that benefits that community, while protecting safety, security, privacy, and confidentiality. Specifically, agencies shall improve data and model inventory documentation to enable discovery and usability, and shall prioritize improvements to access and quality of AI data and models based on the AI research community’s user feedback.

(i) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the OMB Director shall publish a notice in the Federal Register inviting the public to identify additional requests for access or quality improvements for Federal data and models that would improve AI R&D and testing. Additionally, within 90 days of the date of this order, OMB, in conjunction with the Select Committee, shall investigate barriers to access or quality limitations of Federal data and models that impede AI R&D and testing. Collectively, these actions by OMB will help to identify datasets that will facilitate non-Federal AI R&D and testing.

(ii) Within 120 days of the date of this order, OMB, including through its interagency councils and the Select Committee, shall update implementation guidance for Enterprise Data Inventories and Source Code Inventories to support discovery and usability in AI R&D.

(iii) Within 180 days of the date of this order, and in accordance with the implementation of the Cross-Agency Priority Goal: Leveraging Federal Data as a Strategic Asset, from the March 2018 President’s Management Agenda, agencies shall consider methods of improving the quality, usability, and appropriate access to priority data identified by the AI research community. Agencies shall also identify any associated resource implications.


(b) The Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Energy, the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Director of the National Science Foundation shall, to the extent appropriate and consistent with applicable law, prioritize the allocation of high-performance computing resources for AI-related applications through:

(i) increased assignment of discretionary allocation of resources and resource reserves; or

(ii) any other appropriate mechanisms.

SOURCES- AAAS, White House

Written By Brian Wang. Nextbigfuture.com

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