Will Trump's New Artificial Intelligence Initiative Make The U.S. The World Leader In AI?

The tech world got a surprise on Monday when a senior administration official for the Trump administration announced during a telephone briefing that the President would be signing an executive order that would create an American AI Initiative designed to dedicate resources and funnel investments into research on artificial intelligence (AI). The order, titled Accelerating America's Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, "will direct agencies to prioritize AI investments in research and development, increase access to federal data and models for that research and prepare workers to adapt to the era of AI." While an obvious concern is funding for these innovations, no announcements have been made about the specific financial resources that will become available to the new program. Aside from how it will be paid for, we also currently lack information on how the government intends to structure or re-structure resources, who, exactly, they intend to call on for this effort (other than "federal agencies"), or how soon we should expect to see things take shape. Of course, Congress will ultimately decide how much money the program gets.