Workshop Goals This workshop aimed to identify initial challenges and opportunities for national resources for AI research (e.g., compute, data, models, etc.) and to facilitate planning for the envisioned National AI Research Resource (NAIRR). Participants included AI and cyberinfrastructure (CI) experts. Significant Findings 1. AI researchers confront unprecedented scale that goes well beyond generative AI 2. National investments in AI research resources have been insufficient 3. The suboptimal usability of current resources is compromising AI investigation topics 4. The cadence and intensity of AI conference publications is unlike other research areas 5. Better practices for managing local resources are needed 6. Access to AI research resources is very uneven for different institutions 7. There is an opportunity for greater alignment between CI and AI efforts 8. AI research needs warrant unique approaches to CI and to national shared resources Critical Needs Participants identified ten prototypical AI workflows in two major areas with an immediate need for large-scale resources.

The task force developing recommendations on a National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource must balance the need to provide valuable data with the increased risk it could be used to triangulate personally identifiable information, given the large number of parties expected to have access, experts say. Task force members want to include startups and small businesses developing privacy technologies among NAIRR's users, but exactly how resources, capabilities and policies would be integrated continues to be discussed, according to co-chair Manish Parashar. Members previously stated that U.S.-based researchers and students -- primarily in academia but also with companies that have received federal grants like Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer funding -- are target users of the NAIRR. Privacy technologies they're developing could help the resource protect personally identifiable information (PII). "Yes, the task force is certainly discussing how privacy-enabling technologies could help enhance the privacy aspects of NAIRR usage," Parashar told FedScoop.