While it’s not surprising that private tech companies have taken the lead in the ongoing development of AI, the full potential of AI cannot be reached unless the public sector and academia are integrally involved, as well.
So says Dr. Fei-Fei Li, a computer scientist at Stanford University, in a recent commentary at The Hill.
“Like all technologies human civilization has built,” she writes, “AI is a tool that is as good or as bad as those who make and use it. It reflects the values of our society and our time.”
On the dark side, there’s ample potential for AI to be used by both “state and non-state actors” to wreak havoc on entire economies or usher in “a grim digital authoritarianism that can threaten people’s ability to speak, live, act, and even think freely . . .”
On the other hand, AI that is “rooted in universal human rights and democratic values can become the basis for greater freedom and prosperity. AI can manage routine functions and allow people to focus on more meaningful work. Digital tools can aid medical diagnostics and treatment, improving care for patients and helping our elderly population.”
To guard against the negative potential and encourage the positive, Dr. Li says, will require a firm guiding hand from the federal government, and to that end she applauds the Biden administration for acting on a Congressional mandate to create a National AI Research Resource Task Force, of which she is a member.
“With top experts from the federal government, higher education, and private organizations,” she notes, “the task force is dedicated to strengthening America’s foundation and spurring advances in artificial intelligence (AI). . . The time has never been more critical for us to come together and cement America’s leadership in AI — a technology that has the potential to drive innovation in every industry, from manufacturing and healthcare to transportation and defense.”
According to Li, however, that need to come together is where a critical problem lies.
“America's economic, scientific, and national security leadership depends upon our ability to continually generate ever more innovative breakthroughs in advanced science and technology, including artificial intelligence,” she explains. “Yet today, the expensive compute power and data necessary for AI research and development are available only to a small group of the most advanced technology companies. And even while these powerful technology companies successfully explore and advance AI applications, speculative basic and foundational academic research has slowed as resources have grown out of reach, and as faculty have departed for industry.”
The answer, she explains, is to “build a much more expansive, inclusive, and robust innovative ecosystem of industry, academia, civil society and the federal government. Key to this will be our ability to cultivate and support the vast untapped potential of American’s academic researchers who don’t currently have access to the same infrastructure of AI research and development (R&D) as large tech companies. Without federal funding of this basic and foundational AI research, which traditionally takes place at universities and then is commercialized in industry, the pipeline of AI innovation will quickly run dry.”
Photo by laremenko/Getty Images