Stakeholders in the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) convene for high-level discussions at NYU

When computer scientist Robert Taylor became the director of the Information Processing Techniques Office at the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the 1960s, he spearheaded the creation of ARPANET, the first public packet-switched computer network. A precursor to today’s internet, ARPANET gave the nation’s academics and researchers access to supercomputing power for the first time.

More than five decades later, with AI kicking off a new revolution, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recognizes the need to similarly democratize access to a rich trove of AI resources. The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot is the first step in building a shared national research infrastructure that will connect U.S. researchers to responsible and trustworthy AI resources, as well as the computational, data, software, training, and educational resources needed to leverage them.

In late July, NYU Tandon Institute Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and NYU CDS Associate Professor of Data Science Julia Stoyanovich — who directs the NYU Tandon-based Center for Responsible AI and is also a faculty member at both Tandon’s Visualization Imaging and Data Analysis Center (VIDA) — convened “Community-Informed Policies and Best-Practices for the NAIRR,” a multi-day workshop that brought dozens of academic researchers, and representatives from government agencies and from industry, to the university.

Stoyanovich’s aim in convening the workshop was to obtain community feedback regarding policies, best practices and priorities for the NAIRR; to gather suggestions for improving the trustworthiness of the resource; and to foster a dialogue between the responsible and trustworthy AI and cyberinfrastructure communities.

The stated goal of the NAIRR is to strengthen and democratize the U.S. AI innovation ecosystem in a way that protects privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. This goal simply cannot be achieved without an explicit focus on accountability, transparency, and equity in the design and operation of the resource.  The community perspectives we gathered during the workshop will lead to suggestions for improving the trustworthiness of the NAIRR — during its Pilot stage and beyond — and for supporting the equitable use of the resource by a diverse group of researchers and students.” 
— Associate Professor Julia Stoyanovich

Among the highlights of the event were a presentation by William Miller, NSF Senior Advisor for Cyberinfrastructure, and Alejandro Suarez, Program Director of the NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure; breakout group discussions on topics including education and training,  transparency and data equity, responsible development and use of generative AI, and ways to engage industry partners and other community stakeholders; and panel presentations by members of the NAIRR Task Force and of select NAIRR Pilot partners.

The importance of the workshop — which was funded by the NSF and the Omidyar Network, and was co-hosted by the NYU Tandon Center for Responsible AI and the NYU Center for Data Science was underscored by the number and variety of attendees and their affiliations. In addition to numerous academic institutions,  organizations represented included nonprofits like RTI International and the Social Science Research Council; National Labs like Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Lawrence Livermore; companies like Microsoft, Hugging Face and Defined.ai; and government entities like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

It would be hard to imagine a better group gathered to help the NSF answer the questions they’re now facing: Which issues should the NAIRR set as priorities? What operational processes should be put in place? How can a diverse group of users be drawn to the program?

The NAIRR Pilot phase is absolutely critical, Miller and Suarez stressed. “We have one shot to prove NAIRR’s value and build an ecosystem that will be sustainable into the future.”

Although Stoyanovich conceived of and helmed the workshop, she had the help of a hardworking and dedicated team to ensure that the event ran smoothly.

• Andrew Bell, NYU Tandon 
• Caterina Fuligni, NYU Tandon 
• Chastity Hidalgo, NYU Center for Data Science
• Lucas Rosenblatt, NYU Tandon 
• Lucius Bynum, NYU Center for Data Science 
• Sarah Lawson, NYU Tandon 
• Venetia Pliatskia, NYU Tandon