Senate bill to create NSF-awarded AI challenges gets House companion
A Senate bill that would task the National Science Foundation with overseeing a multimillion-dollar competition on artificial intelligence innovations now has a House companion from the leaders of the chamber’s AI task force.
The AI Grand Challenges Act from Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif., announced in a press release Wednesday, pairs with the May bill from Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., in calling on the NSF director to create and administer contests that incentivize researchers and entrepreneurs in AI research and innovations.
“Artificial intelligence has the power to change our world,” Lieu said in a statement. “We must maintain American leadership in AI research, innovation and implementation while minimizing potential risks associated with the technology. The AI Grand Challenges Act would encourage the next generation of AI researchers and developers through prize competitions to incentivize ambitious, cutting-edge AI development.”
Said Obernolte: “The AI Grand Challenges Act will ensure the U.S. will continue to lead in AI research and development across critical sectors such as health, energy, and cybersecurity. By incentivizing breakthroughs, we are paving the way for transformative advancements that will harnesses the incredible potential of artificial intelligence to solve some of our nation’s most pressing challenges.”
The legislation calls for $1 million grand challenges that leverage AI technologies to solve problems in more than a dozen categories: national security, cybersecurity, health, energy, environment, transportation, agriculture and rural development, education and workforce training, manufacturing, space and aerospace, quantum computing, materials science, supply chain resilience, disaster preparedness, and natural resources management. There would also be a category for cross-cutting AI, covering “robustness, interpretability, explainability, transparency, safety, privacy, content provenance, and bias mitigation.”
The legislation also calls on the NSF director, in concert with the directors of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institutes of Health, to oversee $10 million grand challenges for AI-enabled cancer breakthroughs.
Those competitions are aimed at using AI to target breakthroughs in the “most lethal forms of cancer and related comorbidities,” with an emphasis on “detection, diagnostics, treatments, therapeutics” or other AI innovations to increase “the total quality-adjusted life years of those affected or likely to be affected by cancer,” the bill states.
