Artificial Intelligence R&D Interagency Working Group

The Artificial Intelligence R&D Interagency Working Group (AI R&D IWG) was formed in 2018 to coordinate Federal AI R&D across 32 participating agencies and to support activities tasked by both the NSTC Select Committee on AI and the Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (MLAI). Through the NITRD Subcommittee, the AI IWG will coordinate AI activities to advance the mission of the National AI Initiative Office (NAIIO).

Guided by the eight strategic priorities of the National AI R&D Strategic Plan: 2019 Update, the IWG gathers information from AI experts to ensure that government investment in AI R&D results in innovative applications to address the Nation’s challenges, take advantage of its opportunities, and promote U.S. leadership and global competitiveness. Details of many recent and ongoing Federal AI R&D programs and applications are available in the 2016-2019 AI R&D Progress Report.  The Video and Image Analytics (VIA) Team reports to the Artificial Intelligence R&D Interagency Working Group.

Strategic Priorities

The 8 strategic priorities below are key focus areas for Federal coordination and collaboration:

• Make and coordinate long-term Federal investments in AI research that strives for robust, reliable systems that exhibit the flexibility and versatility of human intelligence and optimize performance.
• Promote safe and effective methods for human–AI collaboration through advanced techniques for human augmentation, visualization, and AI-human interfaces.
• Address the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI by assuring that systems align with ethical-legal-societal goals and formal and informal human norms.
• Improve the safety and security of AI systems by ensuring they operate in a controlled, well-defined, and well-understood manner so that failures can be traced and avoided.
• Develop the shared public datasets and environments needed to increase the accuracy, benefits, safety, and trustworthiness of AI through improved training and testing.
• Measure and evaluate AI technologies by establishing shared standards and benchmarks to address safety, reliability, accuracy, usability, interoperability, robustness, and security.
• Expand the AI workforce through education and training for K- 20, career professionals, and society-at-large to ensure America leads in the automation of the future.
• Facilitate public-private partnerships to leverage expertise in industry, academia, and across government to build and strengthen the AI R&D ecosystem.

This dashboard illustrates the Federal budget for nondefense AI R&D investments across several fiscal years. It provides both an overall budget rollup, as well as breakdowns of investments by agency and by NITRD Program Component Areas (PCAs), major subject areas for Federal IT R&D.

Learn more about Federal Agencies investments in AI R&D which shows sustained investments in key priority R&D areas: AI R&D Federal Investments Dashboard.

The AI Research Program Repository provides a searchable directory of AI-relevant Federal grant programs and collaboration opportunities. In this repository, programs can be filtered by the offering department or agency, the particular AI strategy(ies) topic that is covered (as outlined in the National AI R&D Strategic Plan: 2019 Update), and whether the program supports “core AI” research, which advances the foundations of AI, or “other AI”, which refers to use-inspired AI research in fields such as cybersecurity or materials discovery. This repository currently includes 140 programs and will be updated as new programs are announced.

The National AI Initiative Office was established in January 2021 to oversee and implement the National AI Initiative Act (NAIIA).

The NAIIO along with the NITRD Subcommittee directs the NITRD AI R&D IWG to coordinate Federal R&D investment in AI.

Visit AI.gov to learn more about the NAIIO, it’s charge, and its significant activities that advance U.S. leadership in AI.