AI research, tech education needs more support in US, industry experts say

• Read original article here

The U.S. will need more investment and other support for research and education to help ensure the country's leadership in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence over the coming decade, industry experts said during a recent Senate hearing.

Testimony at the Sept. 29 Senate Commerce Committee hearing focused on how the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act could enhance the development of emerging technologies, notably in the fields of AI, quantum computing and blockchain. The bipartisan CHIPS bill, which passed in early August, includes over $52 billion in total appropriations for boosting domestic semiconductor production and research.

"Now is the time to accelerate federal investment to maintain a competitive edge," said Nancy Allbritton, the dean of the University of Washington's college of engineering, at the hearing.

AI and machine learning techniques would be enhanced by new-generation semiconductors, allowing them to process larger amounts of data than what current hardware capabilities provide.

But how the data is or might be processed has garnered scrutiny, particularly in areas like content recommendation algorithms and facial recognition technology.

At the hearing, Jack Clark, co-founder of AI safety research group Anthropic, pushed for the funding and development of testbeds — hardware platforms that evaluate the performance, usability and ethics of machine learning models — to identify and mitigate potential and unintended societal harms from using algorithms, for instance.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who leads Senate Commerce's Space and Science Subcommittee, told S&P Global Market Intelligence that the U.S. should work towards leadership on establishing AI fairness standards. That may mean new regulatory standards, but "what form that takes, whether it'd be a rulemaking or as legislation," remains unclear, Hickenlooper said.

The Biden administration is currently developing a national AI research entity for American companies, universities and other stakeholders, known as NAIRR. A White House official told Market Intelligence in May that the federal resource could guide Congress in developing legislation to crack down on harmful or abusive algorithms.

Senate hearing witnesses also said the federal government should focus more on supporting education and workforce development for emerging technology fields.

Bob Sutor, vice president of corporate development at ColdQuanta, a quantum computing technology company based in Colorado, said education is essential for future jobs in quantum technology. Quantum computing, a computational practice that uses quantum mechanics to perform calculations, is a still-nascent field that stands to benefit by the development of next-generation semiconductors and other hardware capable of high-level data processing.

"I do believe it comes down to talent and it comes down to skills, ultimately," Sutor said. "We have to make sure we can train the people we have, or we can get them."

Sutor and others encouraged regulators and industry to work together to enable more opportunities for international work candidates with qualifying credentials.

The CHIPS legislation has drawn criticism from some stakeholders who said the bill should have addressed an ongoing backlog of visa requests for immigrant workers with master's and doctorate degrees in STEM fields.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., who helped lead the CHIPS legislation, said the tech hub provisions laid out in the bill would help pave the way forward for more research and education. The planned tech hubs are consortiums of universities, government entities, non-profits and other groups that serve as impetuses for semiconductor research.

"[The hubs] will be essential to meeting the goals...of ensuring that we significantly enhance our economic security and resiliency, and advance our national security innovation base build-out," Young, R-Ind. told Market Intelligence after the hearing.