US Global AI Research Agenda report released

Image by Alan Warburton / © BBC / Better Images of AI / Nature / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0

This week saw the release of two complimentary reports from the US Government: the Global AI Research Agenda and the AI in Global Development Playbook. These documents are designed to guide future research on artificial intelligence and its use in advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals. The aim is to “foster a holistic and coordinated approach to AI research and development that benefits all people”.

The Executive summary of the Global AI Research Agenda states that:

The Global AI Research Agenda recommends principles, priorities, and practices for AI research and development to advance safe, secure, and trustworthy development of AI systems in international contexts. It aims to strengthen collaboration in researching the interactions between individuals, communities, and society with AI systems, foster innovation, and support equitable access to the benefits of AI. The conclusions presented serve as a starting point to align a global research vision, in which research communities continuously assess the state of AI research, review current publications addressing the presented priorities, and identify gaps to guide future research, focusing on global needs.

The document contains a section outlining research priorities to advance safe, secure, inclusive, and trustworthy AI. These broadly align with the following themes:

• Sociotechnical research
• Inclusive research infrastructure
• Research to support AI for global challenges
• Fundamental research on AI, including AI safety, security, and trustworthiness
• Research on AI’s global labor market implications

The report also details recommended practices for AI research, and provides a global perspective on what implementation practices could look like for research funders, research ecosystem hubs, and research teams.

The companion document – the AI in Global Development Playbook – is “a roadmap to develop the capacity, ecosystems, frameworks, partnerships, applications, and institutions to leverage safe, secure, and trustworthy AI for sustainable development”. The Playbook provides some practical guidance though a series of case studies which highlight existing initiatives and organizations doing exemplary work.

The recommendations of the Playbook focus around eight key areas:

• Enhancing capacity, promoting AI-related skills across all sectors and levels, and protecting the workforce
• Building trusted and sustainable digital infrastructure
• Broadening access to data storage and compute resources
• Creating representative, locally relevant datasets and preserving cultural heritage
• Developing strategies to deliver the promise of AI in practice
• Advancing good governance frameworks for the development and use of safe and rights-respecting AI systems
• Fostering trust in AI through openness, transparency, and explainability
• Deploying AI sustainably and for climate action

Read the reports in full

• Global AI Research Agenda
• AI in Global Development Playbook

AIhub is dedicated to free high-quality information about AI.

AIhub is dedicated to free high-quality information about AI.