November 3rd has passed, but the 2020 Presidential Election is ongoing. While there are quite a lot of unknowns, not least of which is who was elected President, there are some things that we know right now. Additionally, we can point to some key races that are still undecided. What does this mean for federally supported research here in Washington? Let’s get into the details.
The Trump Administration continues to issue regulatory rule changes that impact the US higher education and research communities. Regular readers of the Policy Blog will recall that earlier this year the Administration issued multiple proclamations and other policy changes, with regard to legal immigration that impacted the US research community in some way. While the Administration backed off in some of these instances, they never did so completely; in fact, the rhetoric and desire to make lasting changes to the American immigration system remained.
In case you missed it — the CCC Blog has coverage of National Science Foundation’s recently announcement “establishing new artificial intelligence institutes to accelerate research, expand America’s workforce, and transform society in the decades to come.” This move is in line with one of the recommendations in the CCC-led AI roadmap report, A 20-Year Community Roadmap for AI Research in the US. This is great news; and, when combined with the efforts in Congress to bolster AI research — including adding the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 to the House National Defense Authorization Act, which is a piece of “must pass” legislation — signals that AI research is likely to stay a hot-topic in Washington for some time. Keep checking back for more updates.
There has been a flurry of activity over the last few weeks on a number of AI related pieces of legislation in Congress.
Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Democratic Leader in the Senate, introduced bipartisan legislation that would authorize $100 billion in new funding for the National Science Foundation and make the agency responsible for maintaining the country’s global leadership in innovation. The bill, called S. 3832 “The Endless Frontiers Act,” proposes a major reorganization of NSF and possibly a significant change to the culture of the agency.
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Ranking Member Frank Lucas (R-OK) yesterday introduced long-awaited legislation aimed at solidifying the U.S. leadership role in artificial intelligence research, education, and workforce development.
In our continuing series following the Trump Administration’s Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) budget request, we close out with a roundup of an assortment of Federal research agencies. These include the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NASA. There’s a familiar theme to all of these accounts: cuts to […]
On Monday, the Trump Administration released its Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) Budget Request. Despite administration signals and bipartisan calls for a budget request in line with the funding agreement made in July, the President decided to ignore that agreement and release a funding blueprint with deep reductions to domestic discretionary spending. The federal research portfolio, which is a part of domestic discretionary spending, didn’t escape cuts.
CRA commends the Administration for recognizing the importance of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Information Science to the Nation’s security and competitiveness, and for addressing that with significant new investments in the President’s Budget Request for FY2021. However, we take issue with the proposed cuts to a large number of other areas of science. Failing to […]
The Administration’s deep cuts to research at the National Science Foundation (-6 percent vs. FY20), DOE Office of Science (-17 percent vs. FY20), NIST (-19 percent), and science programs at NASA (-11 percent) take much of the luster away from the President’s AI/Quantum announcements.
