Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

White House Announces $1 Billion Plan to Create AI, Quantum Institutes

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Bipartisianship Cyber Security

Comments: 0

The White House on Wednesday will announce that federal agencies and their private sector partners are committing more than $1 billion over the next five years to establish 12 new research institutes focused on artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences.

The effort is designed to ensure the U.S. remains globally competitive in AI and quantum technologies, administration officials said.

The National Science Foundation and other federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest $140 million in seven institutes focused on AI, while the Energy Department will supervise and invest $625 million in the five institutes focused on quantum information sciences, which includes quantum computing.

The DOE’s investment will be matched by $300 million in private contributions, part of which comes in the form of technology-services donations from International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., and other companies.

The news comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s proposal to spend about 30% more in the 2021 nondefense budget for artificial intelligence and quantum information science.

It also coincides with competitive pressure from China and other countries that are investing in these emerging technologies. China is adopting AI at a faster rate than the U.S. and the European Union, according to a 2019 report released by the Center for Data Innovation, a nonpartisan research institute.

“It is absolutely imperative the United States continues to lead the world in AI and quantum,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios. “The future of American economic prosperity and national security will be shaped by how we invest, research, develop and deploy these cutting edge technologies today.”

The AI institutes will research how technologies can be used in areas such as precision agriculture, weather forecasting and more. The institutes will be hosted by universities across the country: the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of California, Davis, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The quantum institutes will focus on areas including quantum computing and networking. The work will be hosted at the Energy Department’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermilab, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories.

Among the institutes’ objectives is to conduct early research in areas the private sector is less likely to invest in but which the administration considers important for the nation’s competitive position. For instance, one of the AI institutes will work on developing AI-enabled tools that can advance the discovery and manufacturing of new bioactive compounds.

The institutes also will serve as a training ground for the next generation of experts in AI, and the White House sees them as a way to promote diversity in the sector.

“At least six minority serving institutions, including historically black colleges and universities like Tuskegee University, are among the partners,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “In this way, we are establishing a network that we hope expands to involve not only every state, but every segment of our society.”

the taxpayer-funded investments are already part of the budgets of participating federal agencies, a White House spokeswoman said.

Photo: U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios (above). Federal agencies will commit more than $1 billion over the next five years to to establish 12 new research institutes focused on artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences. - PHOTO: MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/ZUMA PRESS

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-announces-1-billion-plan-to-create-ai-quantum-institutes-11598432400?mod=hp_minor_pos4

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