THE NATIONALARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCERESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENTSTRATEGIC PLAN

National Science and Technology Council
Networking and Information Technology
Research and Development Subcommittee

October 2016

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About the National Science and Technology Council
The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is the principal means by which the Executive
Branch coordinates science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the Federal
research and development (R&D) enterprise. One of the NSTC’s primary objectives is establishing clear
national goals for Federal science and technology investments. The NSTC prepares R&D packages aimed
at accomplishing multiple national goals. The NSTC’s work is organized under five committees:
Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability; Homeland and National Security; Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education; Science; and Technology. Each of thesecommittees oversees subcommittees and working groups that are focused on different aspects ofscience and technology. More information is available at www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/nstc.

About the Office of Science and Technology Policy
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was established by the National Science andTechnology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976. The mission of OSTP is threefold; first, toprovide the President and his senior staff with accurate, relevant, and timely scientific and technical advice
on all matters of consequence; second, to ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed bysound science; and third, to ensure that the scientific and technical work of the Executive Branch isproperly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society. The Director of OSTP also serves as
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and manages the NSTC. More information isavailable at www.whitehouse.gov/ostp.

About the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research andDevelopment
The Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) is abody under the Committee on Technology (CoT) of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).
The NITRD Subcommittee coordinates multiagency research and development programs to help assure
continued U.S. leadership in networking and information technology, satisfy the needs of the Federal
Government for advanced networking and information technology, and accelerate development anddeployment of advanced networking and information technology. It also implements relevant provisionsof the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194), as amended by the Next Generation
Internet Research Act of 1998 (P. L. 105-305), and the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully
Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science (COMPETES) Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69). For
more information, see www.nitrd.gov.

Acknowledgments
This document was developed through the contributions of the members and staff of the NITRD Task
Force on Artificial Intelligence. A special thanks and appreciation to additional contributors who helped
write, edit, and review the document: Chaitan Baru (NSF), Eric Daimler (Presidential Innovation Fellow),
Ronald Ferguson (DoD), Nancy Forbes (NITRD), Eric Harder (DHS), Erin Kenneally (DHS), Dai Kim (DoD),
Tatiana Korelsky (NSF), David Kuehn (DOT), Terence Langendoen (NSF), Peter Lyster (NITRD), KC Morris(NIST), Hector Munoz-Avila (NSF), Thomas Rindflesch (NIH), Craig Schlenoff (NIST), Donald Sofge (NRL),and Sylvia Spengler (NSF).

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Copyright Information
This is a work of the U.S. Government and is in the public domain. It may be freely distributed, copied,and translated; acknowledgment of publication by the Office of Science and Technology Policy isappreciated. Any translation should include a disclaimer that the accuracy of the translation is the
responsibility of the translator and not OSTP. It is requested that a copy of any translation be sent toOSTP. This work is available for worldwide use and reuse and under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0
Universal license.

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National Science and Technology Council
Chair
John P. Holdren
Assistant to the President for Science andTechnology and Director, Office of Science andTechnology Policy

Staff
Afua Bruce
Executive Director
Office of Science and Technology Policy

Subcommittee on
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Co-Chair
Ed Felten
Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer
Office of Science and Technology Policy

Co-ChairMichael Garris
Senior Scientist
National Institute of Standards and Technology
U.S. Department of Commerce

Subcommittee on
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development
Co-Chair
Bryan Biegel
Director, National Coordination Office for
Networking and Information Technology
Research and Development

Co-ChairJames Kurose
Assistant Director, Computer and Information
Science and Engineering
National Science Foundation

Networking and Information Technology Research and Development
Task Force on Artificial Intelligence
Co-ChairLynne Parker
Division Director
Information and Intelligent Systems
National Science Foundation

Co-Chair
Jason Matheny
Director
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity

Members
Milton Corn
National Institutes of Health

Nikunj Oza
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

William Ford
National Institute of Justice

Robinson Pino
Department of Energy

Michael Garris
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Gregory Shannon
Office of Science and Technology Policy

Steven Knox
National Security Agency

Scott Tousley
Department of Homeland Securityvii

John Launchbury
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Richard Linderman
Office of the Secretary of Defense

Faisal D’Souza
Technical Coordinator
National Coordination Office for Networking andInformation Technology Research and Development

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Contents
About the National Science and Technology Council .......................................................................................... iii
About the Office of Science and Technology Policy ............................................................................................ iii
About the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development ................ iii
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................... iii
Copyright Information ..........................................................................................................................................iv
National Science and Technology Council ...........................................................................................................vii
Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence ..........................................................................vii
Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development .................................vii
Task Force on Artificial Intelligence .....................................................................................................................vii
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 5
Purpose of the National AI R&D Strategic Plan ................................................................................................ 5
Desired Outcome ............................................................................................................................................. 7
A Vision for Advancing our National Priorities with AI .................................................................................... 8
Current State of AI.......................................................................................................................................... 12
R&D Strategy ........................................................................................................................................................... 15
Strategy 1: Make Long-Term Investments in AI Research ............................................................................. 16
Strategy 2: Develop Effective Methods for Human-AI Collaboration ........................................................... 22
Strategy 3: Understand and Address the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of AI ............................... 26
Strategy 4: Ensure the Safety and Security of AI Systems .............................................................................. 27
Strategy 5: Develop Shared Public Datasets and Environments for AI Training and Testing ......................... 30
Strategy 6: Measure and Evaluate AI Technologies through Standards and Benchmarks............................. 32
Strategy 7: Better Understand the National AI R&D Workforce Needs ......................................................... 35
Recommendations ................................................................................................................................................... 37
Acronyms ................................................................................................................................................................. 39

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Executive Summary
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology that holds promise for tremendous societal andeconomic benefit. AI has the potential to revolutionize how we live, work, learn, discover, andcommunicate. AI research can further our national priorities, including increased economic prosperity,
improved educational opportunities and quality of life, and enhanced national and homeland security.
Because of these potential benefits, the U.S. government has invested in AI research for many years.
Yet, as with any significant technology in which the Federal government has interest, there are not only
tremendous opportunities but also a number of considerations that must be taken into account in
guiding the overall direction of Federally-funded R&D in AI.
On May 3, 2016, the Administration announced the formation of a new NSTC Subcommittee on Machine
Learning and Artificial intelligence, to help coordinate Federal activity in AI.1 This Subcommittee, on June15, 2016, directed the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research andDevelopment (NITRD) to create a National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic
Plan. A NITRD Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was then formed to define the Federal strategic
priorities for AI R&D, with particular attention on areas that industry is unlikely to address.
This National Artificial Intelligence R&D Strategic Plan establishes a set of objectives for Federallyfunded AI research, both research occurring within the government as well as Federally-funded researchoccurring outside of government, such as in academia. The ultimate goal of this research is to produce
new AI knowledge and technologies that provide a range of positive benefits to society, while
minimizing the negative impacts. To achieve this goal, this AI R&D Strategic Plan identifies the following
priorities for Federally-funded AI research:
Strategy 1: Make long-term investments in AI research. Prioritize investments in the next generation of
AI that will drive discovery and insight and enable the United States to remain a world leader in AI.
Strategy 2: Develop effective methods for human-AI collaboration. Rather than replace humans, mostAI systems will collaborate with humans to achieve optimal performance. Research is needed to create
effective interactions between humans and AI systems.
Strategy 3: Understand and address the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI. We expect AI
technologies to behave according to the formal and informal norms to which we hold our fellow
humans. Research is needed to understand the ethical, legal, and social implications of AI, and todevelop methods for designing AI systems that align with ethical, legal, and societal goals.
Strategy 4: Ensure the safety and security of AI systems. Before AI systems are in widespread use,
assurance is needed that the systems will operate safely and securely, in a controlled, well-defined, andwell-understood manner. Further progress in research is needed to address this challenge of creating AI
systems that are reliable, dependable, and trustworthy.
Strategy 5: Develop shared public datasets and environments for AI training and testing. The depth,
quality, and accuracy of training datasets and resources significantly affect AI performance. Researchers
need to develop high quality datasets and environments and enable responsible access to high-quality
datasets as well as to testing and training resources.
Strategy 6: Measure and evaluate AI technologies through standards and benchmarks. Essential toadvancements in AI are standards, benchmarks, testbeds, and community engagement that guide and
1

E. Felten, “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
blog, May 5, 2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/05/03/preparing-future-artificial-intelligence.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
evaluate progress in AI. Additional research is needed to develop a broad spectrum of evaluativetechniques.
Strategy 7: Better understand the national AI R&D workforce needs. Advances in AI will require astrong community of AI researchers. An improved understanding of current and future R&D workforce
demands in AI is needed to help ensure that sufficient AI experts are available to address the strategic
R&D areas outlined in this plan.
The AI R&D Strategic Plan closes with two recommendations:
Recommendation 1: Develop an AI R&D implementation framework to identify S&T
opportunities and support effective coordination of AI R&D investments, consistent with
Strategies 1-6 of this plan.
Recommendation 2: Study the national landscape for creating and sustaining a healthy AI
R&D workforce, consistent with Strategy 7 of this plan.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Introduction
Purpose of the National AI R&D Strategic Plan
In 1956, researchers in computer science from across the United States met at Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire to discuss seminal ideas on an emerging branch of computing called artificial
intelligence or AI. They imagined a world in which “machines use language, form abstractions andconcepts, solve the kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves”.2 This historic
meeting set the stage for decades of government and industry research in AI, including advances inperception, automated reasoning/planning, cognitive systems, machine learning, natural language
processing, robotics, and related fields. Today, these research advances have resulted in new sectors of
the economy that are impacting our everyday lives, from mapping technologies to voice-assisted smart
phones, to handwriting recognition for mail delivery, to financial trading, to smart logistics, to spam
filtering, to language translation, and more. AI advances are also providing great benefits to our social
wellbeing in areas such as precision medicine, environmental sustainability, education, and publicwelfare.3
The increased prominence of AI approaches over the past 25 years has been boosted in large part by the
adoption of statistical and probabilistic methods, the availability of large amounts of data, and increased
computer processing power. Over the past decade, the AI subfield of machine learning, which enables
computers to learn from experience or examples, has demonstrated increasingly accurate results,
causing much excitement about the near-term prospects of AI. While recent attention has been paid to
the importance of statistical approaches such as deep learning,4 impactful AI advances have also been
made in a wide variety of other areas, such as perception, natural language processing, formal logics,
knowledge representations, robotics, control theory, cognitive system architectures, search andoptimization techniques, and many others.
The recent accomplishments of AI have generated important questions on the ultimate direction andimplications of these technologies: What are the important scientific and technological gaps in current
AI technologies? What new AI advances would provide positive, needed economic and societal impacts?
How can AI technologies continue to be used safely and beneficially? How can AI systems be designed toalign with ethical, legal, and societal principles? What are the implications of these advancements for
the AI R&D workforce?
The landscape for AI R&D is becoming increasingly complex. While past and present investments by the
U.S. Government have led to groundbreaking approaches to AI, other sectors have also become
significant contributors to AI, including a wide range of industries and non-profit organizations. This
investment landscape raises major questions about the appropriate role of Federal investments in thedevelopment of AI technologies. What are the right priorities for Federal investments in AI, especiallyregarding areas and timeframes where industry is unlikely to invest? Are there opportunities forindustrial and international R&D collaborations that advance U.S. priorities?

2

J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, C. E. Shannon, “A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Projecton Artificial Intelligence,” August 31, 1955, http://wwwformal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html.
3
See presentations from subject matter experts at Artificial Intelligence for Social Good workshop, June 7, 2016,
http://cra.org/ccc/events/ai-social-good/.
4
Deep learning refers to a general family of methods that use multi-layered neural networks; these methods havesupported rapid progress on tasks once believed to be incapable of automation.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
In 2015, the U.S. Government’s investment in unclassified R&D in AI-related technologies wasapproximately $1.1 billion. Although these investments have led to important new science andtechnologies, there is opportunity for further coordination across the Federal government so that theseinvestments can achieve their full potential.5
Recognizing the transformative effects of AI, in May 2016, the White House Office of Science andTechnology Policy (OSTP) announced a new interagency working group to explore the benefits and risksof AI.6 OSTP also announced a series of four workshops, held in the May-July 2016 time frame, aimed atspurring public dialogue on AI, and identifying the challenges and opportunities it entails. The outcomesof the workshops are part of a companion public report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial
Intelligence, released in conjunction with this plan.
In June 2016, the new NSTC Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence—which is
chartered to stay abreast of advances in AI within the Federal government, the private sector, andinternationally, and to help coordinate Federal activities in AI—tasked the NITRD National Coordination
Office (NCO) to create the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. The
Subcommittee directed that this plan should convey a clear set of R&D priorities that address strategic
research goals, focus Federal investments on those areas in which industry is unlikely to invest, andaddress the need to expand and sustain the pipeline of AI R&D talent.
Input to this AI R&D Strategic Plan has come from a wide range of sources, including Federal agencies,
public discussions at AI-related meetings, an OMB data call across all Federal agencies who invest in ITrelated R&D, the OSTP Request for Information (RFI) that solicited public input about how America canbest prepare for an AI future,7 and information from open publications on AI.
This plan makes several assumptions about the future of AI.8 First, it assumes that AI technologies willcontinue to grow in sophistication and ubiquity, thanks to AI R&D investments by government andindustry. Second, this plan assumes that the impact of AI on society will continue to increase, including
on employment, education, public safety, and national security, as well as the impact on U.S. economic
growth. Third, it assumes that industry investment in AI will continue to grow, as recent commercial
successes have increased the perceived returns on investment in R&D. At the same time, this planassumes that some important areas of research are unlikely to receive sufficient investment by industry,
as they are subject to the typical underinvestment problem surrounding public goods. Lastly, this planassumes that the demand for AI expertise will continue to grow within industry, academia, andgovernment, leading to public and private workforce pressures.
Other R&D strategic plans and initiatives of relevance to this AI R&D Strategic Plan include the Federal
Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan,9 the Federal Cybersecurity Research andDevelopment Strategic Plan,10 the National Privacy Research Strategy,11 the National Nanotechnology
5

While NITRD has several working groups that touch on aspects of AI, there is no current NITRD working groupfocused specifically on coordinating inter-agency AI R&D investments and activities.
6
E. Felten, “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
blog, May 5, 2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/05/03/preparing-future-artificial-intelligence.
7
WH/OSTP RFI blog post: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/06/27/how-prepare-future-artificialintelligence.
8
J. Furman, Is This Time Different? The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, Council of Economic
Advisors remarks, New York University: AI Now Symposium, July 7, 2016.
9
Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan, May 2016,
https://www.nitrd.gov/PUBS/bigdatardstrategicplan.pdf.
10
Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan, February 2016,
https://www.nitrd.gov/cybersecurity/publications/2016_Federal_Cybersecurity_Research_and_Development_Stra
tegic_Plan.pdf.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
Initiative Strategic Plan,12 the National Strategic Computing Initiative,13 the Brain Research throughAdvancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative,14 and the National Robotics Initiative.15 Additional
strategic R&D plans and strategic frameworks are in the developmental stages, addressing certain subfields of AI, including video and image analytics, health information technology, and robotics andintelligent systems. These additional plans and frameworks will provide synergistic recommendations
that complement and expand upon this AI R&D Strategic Plan.

Desired Outcome
This AI R&D Strategic Plan looks beyond near-term AI capabilities toward longer-term transformational
impacts of AI on society and the world. Recent advances in AI have led to significant optimism about thepotential for AI, resulting in strong industry growth and commercialization of AI approaches. However,while the Federal government can leverage industrial investments in AI, many application areas andlong-term research challenges will not have clear near-term profit drivers, and thus may not besignificantly addressed by industry. The Federal government is the primary source of funding for longterm, high-risk research initiatives, as well as near-term developmental work to achieve department- oragency-specific requirements or to address important societal issues that private industry does not
pursue. The Federal government should therefore emphasize AI investments in areas of strong societal
importance that are not aimed at consumer markets—areas such as AI for public health, urban systems
and smart communities, social welfare, criminal justice, environmental sustainability, and national
security, as well as long-term research that accelerates the production of AI knowledge andtechnologies.
A coordinated R&D effort in AI across the Federal government will increase the positive impact of thesetechnologies, and provide policymakers with the knowledge needed to address complex policy
challenges related to the use of AI. A coordinated approach, moreover, will help the United States
capitalize on the full potential of AI technologies for the betterment of society.
This AI R&D Strategic Plan defines a high-level framework that can be used to identify scientific andtechnological gaps in AI and track the Federal R&D investments that are designed to fill those gaps. The
AI R&D Strategic Plan identifies strategic priorities for both near-term and long-term support of AI that
address important technical and societal challenges. The AI R&D Strategic Plan, however, does notdefine specific research agendas for individual Federal agencies. Instead, it sets objectives for the
Executive Branch, within which agencies may pursue priorities consistent with their missions,capabilities, authorities, and budgets, so that the overall research portfolio is consistent with the AI R&D
Strategic Plan.
The AI R&D Strategic Plan also does not set policy on the research or use of AI technologies nor does it
explore the broader concerns about the potential influence of AI on jobs and the economy. While these
topics are critically important to the Nation, they are discussed in the Council of Economic Advisors
report entitled “Is This Time Different? The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence.”8 The
11National Privacy Research Strategy, June 2016,
https://www.nitrd.gov/PUBS/NationalPrivacyResearchStrategy.pdf.
12
National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan, February 2014,
http://www.nano.gov/sites/default/files/pub_resource/2014_nni_strategic_plan.pdf.
13
National Strategic Computing Initiative Strategic Plan, July 2016,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/NSCI%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf
14Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN), April 2013,https://www.whitehouse.gov/BRAIN.
15
National Robotics Initiative, June 2011, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/06/24/developing-nextgeneration-robots.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
AI R&D Strategic Plan focuses on the R&D investments needed to help define and advance policies that
ensure the responsible, safe, and beneficial use of AI.

A Vision for Advancing our National Priorities with AI
Driving this AI R&D Strategic Plan is a hopeful vision of a future world in which AI is safely used forsignificant benefit to all members of society. Further progress in AI could enhance wellbeing in nearly all
sectors of society,16 potentially leading to advancements in national priorities, including increased
economic prosperity, improved quality of life, and strengthened national security. Examples of suchpotential benefits include:

Increased economic prosperity: New products and services can create new markets, and improve thequality and efficiency of existing goods and services across multiple industries. More efficient logistics
and supply chains are being created through expert decision systems.17 Products can be transported
more effectively through vision-based driver-assist and automated/robotic systems.18 Manufacturing
can be improved through new methods for controlling fabrication processes and scheduling workflows.19
How is this increased economic prosperity achieved?


Manufacturing: Technological advances can lead to a new industrial revolution in
manufacturing, including the entire engineering product life cycle. Increased used of robotics
could enable manufacturing to move back onshore.20 AI can accelerate production capabilities
through more reliable demand forecasting, increased flexibility in operations and the supply
chain, and better prediction of the impacts of change to manufacturing operations. AI can create
smarter, faster, cheaper, and more environmentally-friendly production processes that canincrease worker productivity, improve product quality, lower costs, and improve worker healthand safety.21 Machine learning algorithms can improve the scheduling of manufacturing
processes and reduce inventory requirements.22 Consumers can benefit from access to what isnow commercial-grade 3-D printing.23

Logistics: Private-sector manufacturers and shippers can use AI to improve supply-chain
management through adaptive scheduling and routing.24 Supply chains can become more robust

16

See the “2016 Report of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence”, which focuses on the anticipateduses and impacts of AI in the year 2030, https://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report.
17
E. W. T. Ngai, S. Peng, P. Alexander, and K. K. L. Moon, "Decision support and intelligent systems in the textile
and apparel supply chain: An academic review of research articles," Expert Systems with Applications, 41(2014):
81-91.
18
J. Fishelson, D. Freckleton, and K. Heaslip,"Evaluation of automated electric transportation deployment
strategies: integrated against isolated," IET Intelligent Transport Systems, 7 (2013): 337-344.
19
C. H. Dagli, ed., Artificial neural networks for intelligent manufacturing, Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.
20
D. W. Brin, “Robotics on the Rise”, MHI Solutions, Q3, 2013,https://dinahwbrin.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/mhi-solutions-robotics.pdf.
21“Robotics Challenge Aims to Enhance Worker Safety, Improve EM Cleanup”, DOE Office of Environmental
Management, August 31, 2016, http://energy.gov/em/articles/robotics-challenge-aims-enhance-worker-safetyimprove-em-cleanup-other-em-events-set.
22
M. J. Shaw, S. Park, and N. Raman, "Intelligent scheduling with machine learning capabilities: the induction ofscheduling knowledge," IIE transactions, 24.2 (1992): 156-168.
23
H. Lipson and M. Kurman, Fabricated: The new world of 3D printing, John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
24
M. S. Fox, M. Barbuceanu, and R. Teigen, "Agent-oriented supply-chain management," International Journal of
Flexible Manufacturing Systems, 12 (2000): 165-188.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
to disruption by automatically adjusting to anticipated effects of weather, traffic, andunforeseen events.25
Finance: Industry and government can use AI to provide early detection of unusual financial risk
at multiple scales.26 Safety controls can ensure that the automation in financial systems reduces
opportunities for malicious behavior, such as market manipulation, fraud, and anomalous
trading.27 They can additionally increase efficiency and reduce volatility and trading costs, allwhile preventing systemic failures such as pricing bubbles and undervaluing of credit risk.28

Transportation: AI can augment all modes of transportation to materially impact safety for all
types of travel.29 It can be used in structural health monitoring and infrastructure asset
management, providing increased trust from the public and reducing the costs of repairs andreconstruction.30 AI can be used in passenger and freight vehicles to improve safety byincreasing situational awareness, and to provide drivers and other travelers with real-time routeinformation.31 AI applications can also improve network-level mobility and reduce overallsystem energy use and transportation-related emissions.32

Agriculture: AI systems can create approaches to sustainable agriculture that are smarter about
the production, processing, storage, distribution, and consumption of agricultural products. AI
and robotics can gather site-specific and timely data about crops, apply needed inputs (e.g.,water, chemicals, fertilizers) only when and where they are needed, and fill urgent gaps in the
agricultural labor force.33

Marketing: AI approaches can enable commercial entities to better match supply with demand,
driving up revenue that funds ongoing private sector development.34 It can anticipate andidentify consumer needs, enabling them to better find the products and services they want, atlower cost.35

25

S. K. Kumar, M. K. Tiwari, and R. F. Babiceanu, "Minimisation of supply chain cost with embedded risk using
computational intelligence approaches," International Journal of Production Research, 48 (2010): 3717-3739.
26
A. S. Koyuncugil and N. Ozgulbas, "Financial early warning system model and data mining application for risk
detection," Expert Systems with Applications, 39 (2012): 6238-6253.
27
K. Golmohammadi and O. R. Zaiane, "Time series contextual anomaly detection for detecting market
manipulation in stock market," IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA),
2015.
28
T. Mizuta, K. Izumi and S. Yoshimura, "Price variation limits and financial market bubbles: Artificial market
simulations with agents' learning process," IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering& Economics (CIFEr), 2013.
29
J. H. Gillulay and C. J. Tomlin, "Guaranteed safe online learning of a bounded system," IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2011.
30
J. M. W. Brownjohn, "Structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 365 (2007): 589-622.
31
Dia, Hussein, "An agent-based approach to modelling driver route choice behaviour under the influence of realtime information," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 10 (2002): 331-349.
32
H. Kargupta, J. Gama, and W. Fan, "The next generation of transportation systems, greenhouse emissions, anddata mining," Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data
Mining, 2010.
33
H. Hagras, M. Colley, V. Callaghan, and M. Carr-West, "Online learning and adaptation of autonomous mobile
robots for sustainable agriculture," Autonomous Robots, 13 (2002): 37-52.
34
T. Di Noia, E. Di Sciascio, F. M. Donini, and M. Mongiello, "A system for principled matchmaking in an electronic
marketplace," International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8 (2004): 9-37.
35
R. H. Guttman, A. G. Moukas, and P. Maes, "Agent-mediated electronic commerce: a survey," The Knowledge
Engineering Review, 13 (1998): 147-159.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN


Communications: AI technologies can maximize efficient use of bandwidth and automation of
information storage and retrieval.36 AI can improve filtering, searching, language translation, andsummarization of digital communications, positively affecting commerce and the way we live
our lives.37

Science and Technology: AI systems can assist scientists and engineers in reading publications
and patents, refining theories to be more consistent with prior observations, generating testable
hypotheses, performing experiments using robotic systems and simulations, and engineering
new devices and software.38

Improved educational opportunity and quality of life: Lifelong learning can be possible throughvirtual tutors that develop customized learning plans to challenge and engage each person based on
their interests, abilities, and educational needs. People can live healthier and more active lives, using
personalized health information tailored and adapted for each individual. Smart homes and personalvirtual assistants can save people time and reduce time lost in daily repetitive tasks.
How will AI improve educational opportunities and social wellbeing?


Education: AI-enhanced learning schools can be universally available, with automated tutoringthat gauges the development of the student.16 AI tutors can complement in-person teachers andfocus education on advanced and/or remedial learning appropriate to the student.16 AI tools canfoster life-long learning and the acquisition of new skills for all members of society.16



Medicine: AI can support bioinformatics systems that identify genetic risks from large-scale
genomic studies (e.g., genome-wide association studies, sequencing studies), and predict thesafety and efficacy of new pharmaceuticals.39 AI techniques can allow assessments across multidimensional data to study public health issues and to provide decision support systems for
medical diagnoses and prescribe treatments.40 AI technologies are required for thecustomization of drugs for the individual; the result can be increased medical efficacy, patient
comfort, and less waste.41

Law: The analysis of law case history by machines can become widespread.42 The increased
sophistication of these processes can allow for a richer level of analysis for assisting thediscovery process.42 Legal discovery tools can identify and summarize relevant evidence; thesesystems may even formulate legal arguments with increasing sophistication.42

36

I. Kushchu, "Web-based evolutionary and adaptive information retrieval," IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary
Computation, 9 (2005): 117-125.
37
J. Jin, P. Ji, Y. Liu, and S. C. J. Lim, "Translating online customer opinions into engineering characteristics in QFD: A
probabilistic language analysis approach," Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 41 (2015): 115-127.
38
R. D. King, J. Rowland, S. G. Oliver, M. Young, W. Aubrey, E. Byrne, M. Liakata, M. Markham, P. Pir, L. N.
Soldatova, A. Sparkes, K. E. Whelan, and A. Clare, “The Automation of Science”, Science, 324 (2009): 85-89.
39
B. Aksu, A. Paradkhar, M. de Matas, O. Ozer, T. Guneri, and P. York, "A quality by design approach using artificial
intelligence techniques to control the critical quality attributes of ramipril tablets manufactured by wet
granulation," Pharmaceutical development and technology, 18 (2013): 236-245.
40
P. Szolovits, R. S. Patil, and W. B. Schwartz, "Artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis," Annals of internal
medicine, 108 (1988): 80-87.
41
J. Awwalu, Jamilu, A. G. Garba, A. Ghazvini, and R. Atuah,"Artificial Intelligence in Personalized Medicine
Application of AI Algorithms in Solving Personalized Medicine Problems," International Journal of Computer Theory
and Engineering, 7 (2015): 439.
42T. Bench-Capon, M. Araszkiewicz, K. Ashley, K. Atkinson, F. Bex, F. Borges, D. Bourcier, P. Bourgine, J. Conrad, E.
Francesconi, T. Gordon, G. Governatori, J. Leidner, D. Lewis, R. Loui, L. McCarty, H. Prakken, F. Schilder, E.
Schweighofer, P. Thompson, A. Tyrrell, B. Verheij, D. Walton, and A. Wyner, "A history of AI and Law in 50 papers:
25 years of the international conference on AI and Law," Artificial Intelligence and Law, 20 (2012): 215-319.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN


Personal services: AI software can make use of knowledge from multiple sources to provide
more accurate information for a multitude of uses.43 Natural language systems can provide
intuitive interfaces to technological systems in real-world, noisy environments.44 Personalized
tools can enable automated assistance with individual and group scheduling.45 Text can be
automatically summarized from multiple search outcomes, enhanced across multiple media.46 AI
can enable real-time spoken multi-lingual translation.47

Enhanced national and homeland security: Machine learning agents can process large amounts ofintelligence data and identify relevant patterns-of-life from adversaries with rapidly changing tactics.48
These agents can also provide protection to critical infrastructure and major economic sectors that arevulnerable to attack.49 Digital defense systems can significantly reduce battlefield risks and casualties.50
How is enhanced national and homeland security achieved?


Security and law enforcement: Law enforcement and security officials can help create a safer
society through the use of pattern detection to detect anomalous behavior in individual actors,
or to predict dangerous crowd behavior.48 Intelligent perception systems can protect criticalinfrastructure, such as airports and power plants.49

Safety and prediction: Distributed sensor systems and pattern understanding of normal
conditions can detect when the probability of major infrastructure disruptions increases
significantly, whether triggered by natural or man-made causes. 51 This anticipatory capability
can help indicate where the problem will be, to adapt operations to forestall disruption as, oreven before it happens.51

This vision for the positive use of AI, however, requires significant R&D advancements. Many critical anddifficult technical challenges remain in all subfields of AI, both in basic science and in areas ofapplication. AI technologies also present risks, such as the potential disruption of the labor market as
humans are augmented or replaced by automated systems, and uncertainties about the safety andreliability of AI systems. Subsequent sections of this AI R&D Strategic Plan discuss high-priority, strategicareas of AI R&D investments that will support this vision, while mitigating potential disruption and risk.

43

K. Wei, J. Huang and S. Fu, "A survey of e-commerce recommender systems," International Conference on
Service Systems and Service Management, 2007.
44
M. Fleischman and D. Roy, "Intentional context in situated natural language learning," Proceedings of the Ninth
Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2005.
45
P. Berry, K. Conley, M. Gervasio, B. Peintner, T. Uribe, and N. Yorke-Smith, "Deploying a personalized time
management agent," Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents andMultiagent Systems, 2006.
46
U. Hahn and I. Mani, "The challenges of automatic summarization," Computer, 33 (2000): 29-36.
47
M. Paul, H. Okuma, H. Yamamoto, E. Sumita, S. Matsuda, T. Shimizu, and S. Nakamura,"Multilingual mobilephone translation services for world travelers," 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics:
Demonstration Papers, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2008.
48
G. Gross, E. Little, B. Park, J. Llinas, and R. Nagi, "Application of multi-level fusion for pattern of life analysis,"18th International Conference on Information Fusion, 2015.
49
S. L. P. Yasakethu, J. Jiang, and A. Graziano, "Intelligent risk detection and analysis tools for critical infrastructure
protection," IEEE International Conference on Computer as a Tool (EUROCON), 2013.
50
N. G. Siegel and A. M. Madni, "The Digital Battlefield: A Behind-the-Scenes Look from a Systems Perspective,"
Procedia Computer Science, 28 (2014): 799-808.
51
B. Genge, C. Siaterlis, and G. Karopoulos, "Data fusion-based anomaly detection in networked criticalinfrastructures," 43rd Annual IEEE/IFIP Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshop (DSN-W),
2013.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Current State of AI
Since its beginnings, AI research has advanced in three technology waves. The first wave focused on
handcrafted knowledge, with a strong focus in the 1980s on rule-based expert systems in well-defined
domains, in which knowledge was collected from a human expert, expressed in “if-then” rules, and thenimplemented in hardware. Such systems-enabled reasoning was applied successfully to narrowly
defined problems, but it had no ability to learn or to deal with uncertainty. Nevertheless, they still led toimportant solutions, and the development of techniques that are still actively used today.
The second wave of AI research from the 2000s to the present is characterized by the ascent of machinelearning. The availability of significantly larger amounts of digital data, relatively inexpensive massively
parallel computational capabilities, and improved learning techniques have brought significant advancesin AI when applied to tasks such as image and writing recognition, speech understanding, and humanlanguage translation. The fruits of these advances are everywhere: smartphones perform speech
recognition, ATMs perform handwriting recognition on written checks, email applications perform spam
filtering, and free online services perform machine translation. Key to some of these successes was thedevelopment of deep learning.
AI systems now regularly outperform humans on specialized tasks. Major milestones when AI first52
53
54
surpassed human performance include: chess (1997), trivia (2011), Atari games (2013), image
55
56
57
recognition (2015), speech recognition (2015), and Go (2016). The pace of such milestones appears
to be increasing, as is the degree to which the best-performing systems are based on machine learning
methods, rather than sets of hand-coded rules.
Such achievements in AI have been fueled by a strong base of fundamental research. This research is
expanding and is likely to spur future advances. As one indicator, from 2013 to 2015 the number of Web
of Science-indexed journal articles mentioning "deep learning" increased six-fold (Figure 1). The trends
also reveal the increasingly global nature of research, with the United States no longer leading the worldin publication numbers, or even publications receiving at least one citation (Figure 2).
The U.S. Government has played a key role in AI research, although the commercial sector is also activein AI-related R&D.58 There has been a sharp increase in the number of patents that use the term “deeplearning” or “deep neural net” (Figure 3). From 2013 to 2014, there was a four-fold increase in venture
capital directed to AI startups.59 AI applications are now generating substantial revenues for large
businesses.60 The impact of AI on financial systems is even larger—automated (“algorithmic”) trading is
responsible for about half of all global financial trading, representing trillions of dollars in transactions.61
52

M. Campbell, A. J. Hoane Jr., F-H. Hsu, “Deep Blue,” Artificial Intelligence, 134 (2002): 57-83.
"IBM's "Watson" Computing System to Challenge All Time Jeopardy! Champions," news release by Sony Pictures
Television, December 14, 2010.
54“Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning,” http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.01783v2.pdf.
55“Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition,” http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03385v1; for human performance,
see http://karpathy.github.io/2014/09/02/what-i-learned-from-competing-against-a-convnet-on-imagenet/.
56“Deep Speech 2: End-to-End Speech Recognition in English and Mandarin,” http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02595v1.
57
S. Byford, "Google's AlphaGo AI beats Lee Se-dol again to win Go series 4-1," The Verge, March 15, 2016.
58“Microsoft, Google, Facebook and more are investing in artificial intelligence: What is their plan and who are theother key players?”, TechWorld, September 29, 2106, http://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/big-data/9-techgiants-investing-in-artificial-intelligence-3629737/.
59“Artificial Intelligence Startups See 302% Funding Jump in 2014,” CB Insights, February 10, 2015.
60“The Business of Google,” Investopedia, 2016,
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp, retrieved October 5, 2016.
61
B. M. Weller, “Efficient Prices at Any Cost: Does Algorithmic Trading Deter Information Acquisition?”, May 21,
2016, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2662254 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2662254.
53

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Figure 1: Journal articles mentioning “deep learning” or “deep neural network”, by nation.62

Figure 2: Journal articles cited at least once, mentioning “deep learning” or “deep neural network”, by nation.63

62

Data for this figure was obtained from a search of the Web of Science Core Collection for "deep learning" or"deep neural net*", for any publication, retrieved 30 August 2016.
63
Data for this figure was obtained from a search of the Web of Science Core Collection for "deep learning" or"deep neural net*", limited to publications receiving one or more citations, retrieved 30 August 2016.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Figure 3: Analysis of number of patents using term “deep learning” or “deep neural net”.64

Despite progress, AI systems still have their limitations. Virtually all progress has been in "narrow AI"
that performs well on specialized tasks; little progress has been made in "general AI" that functions wellacross a variety of cognitive domains. Even within narrow AI, progress has been uneven. AI systems forimage recognition rely on significant human effort to label the answers to thousands of examples.65 In
contrast, most humans are capable of "one-shot" learning from only a few examples. While mostmachine vision systems are easily confused by complex scenes with overlapping objects, children caneasily perform "scene parsing." Scene understanding that is easy for a human is still often difficult for amachine.
The AI field is now in the beginning stages of a possible third wave, which focuses on explanatory andgeneral AI technologies. The goals of these approaches are to enhance learned models with an
explanation and correction interface, to clarify the basis for and reliability of outputs, to operate with ahigh degree of transparency, and to move beyond narrow AI to capabilities that can generalize acrossbroader task domains. If successful, engineers could create systems that construct explanatory models
for classes of real world phenomena, engage in natural communication with people, learn and reason as
they encounter new tasks and situations, and solve novel problems by generalizing from pastexperience. Explanatory models for these AI systems might be constructed automatically throughadvanced methods. These models could enable rapid learning in AI systems. They may supply “meaning”
or “understanding” to the AI system, which could then enable the AI systems to achieve more generalcapabilities.

64

Data for this figure was obtained from a search of the Derwent World Patents Index for "deep learning" or "deepneural net*", retrieved 30 August 2016.
65
In technical parlance, this refers to supervised learning.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

R&D Strategy
The research priorities outlined in this AI R&D Strategic Plan focus on areas that industry is unlikely toaddress and thus areas that are most likely to benefit from Federal investment. These priorities cut
across all of AI to include needs common to the AI sub-fields of perception, automatedreasoning/planning, cognitive systems, machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, andrelated fields. Because of the breadth of AI, these priorities span the entire field, rather than only
focusing on individual research challenges specific to each sub-domain. To implement the plan, detailed
roadmaps should be developed that address the capability gaps consistent with the plan.
One of the most important Federal research priorities, outlined in Strategy 1, is for sustained long-term
research in AI to drive discovery and insight. Many of the investments by the U.S. Federal government inhigh-risk, high-reward fundamental research have led to revolutionary technological advances wedepend on today, including the Internet, GPS, smartphone speech recognition, heart monitors, solar
panels, advanced batteries, cancer therapies, and much, much more. The promise of AI touches nearly
every aspect of society and has the potential for significant positive societal and economic benefits.
Thus, to maintain a world leadership position in this area, the United States must focus its investments
on high-priority fundamental and long-term AI research.
Many AI technologies will work with and alongside humans,16 thus leading to important challenges in
how to best create AI systems that work with people in intuitive and helpful ways.16 The walls between
humans and AI systems are slowly beginning to erode, with AI systems augmenting and enhancing
human capabilities. Fundamental research is needed to develop effective methods for human-AI
interaction and collaboration, as outlined in Strategy 2.
AI advancements are providing many positive benefits to society and are increasing U.S. national
competitiveness.8 However, as with most transformative technologies, AI presents some risks in several
areas, from jobs and the economy to safety, ethical, and legal questions. Thus, as AI science andtechnology develop, the Federal government must also invest in research to better understand what the
implications are for AI for all these realms, and to address these implications by developing AI systems
that align with ethical, legal, and societal goals, as outlined in Strategy 3.
A critical gap in current AI technology is a lack of methodologies to ensure the safety and predictableperformance of AI systems. Ensuring the safety of AI systems is a challenge because of the unusualcomplexity and evolving nature of these systems. Several research priorities address this safety
challenge. First, Strategy 4 emphasizes the need for explainable and transparent systems that are
trusted by their users, perform in a manner that is acceptable to the users, and can be guaranteed to act
as the user intended. The potential capabilities and complexity of AI systems, combined with the wealthof possible interactions with human users and the environment, makes it critically important to invest in
research that increases the security and control of AI technologies. Strategy 5 calls on the Federal
government to invest in shared public datasets for AI training and testing in order to advance theprogress of AI research and to enable a more effective comparison of alternative solutions. Strategy 6
discusses how standards and benchmarks can focus R&D to define progress, close gaps, and drive
innovative solutions for specific problems and challenges. Standards and benchmarks are essential formeasuring and evaluating AI systems and ensuring that AI technologies meet critical objectives forfunctionality and interoperability.
Finally, the growing prevalence of AI technologies across all sectors of society creates new pressures for
AI R&D experts.66 Opportunities abound for core AI scientists and engineers with a deep understanding
66“AI talent grab sparks excitement and concern”, Nature, April 26, 2016.

15

NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLANof the technology who can generate new ideas for advancing the boundaries of knowledge in the field.
The Nation should take action to ensure a sufficient pipeline of AI-capable talent. Strategy 7 addresses
this challenge.
Figure 4 provides a graphical illustration of the overall organization of this AI R&D Strategic Plan. Acrossthe bottom (in red) are the crosscutting, underlying foundations that affect the development of all AI
systems; these foundations are described in Strategies 3-7. The next layer higher (in lighter and medium
dark blue) includes many areas of research that are needed to advance AI. These basic research areas(including use-inspired basic research) are outlined in Strategies 1-2.67 Across the top row of the graphic(in dark blue) are examples of applications that are expected to benefit from advances in AI, as
discussed in the Vision section earlier in this document. Together, these components of the AI R&D
Strategic Plan define a high-level framework for Federal investments that can lead to impactful advancesin the field and positive societal benefits.

Figure 4. Organization of the AI R&D Strategic Plan. A combination of crosscutting R&D foundations (in the lower
red row) are important for all AI research. Many basic AI R&D areas (in lighter and medium dark blue row) canbuild upon these crosscutting foundations to impact a wide array of societal applications (in top dark blue row).
(The small numbers in brackets indicate the number of the Strategy in this plan that further develops each topic.
The ordering of these Strategies does not indicate a priority of importance.)

Strategy 1: Make Long-Term Investments in AI Research
AI research investments are needed in areas with potential long-term payoffs. While an importantcomponent of long-term research is incremental research with predictable outcomes, long-termsustained investments in high-risk research can lead to high-reward payoffs. These payoffs can be seen
67

Throughout this document, basic research includes both pure basic research and use-inspired basic research –the so-called Pasteur’s Quadrant defined by Donald Stokes in his 1997 book of the same name – referring to basic
research that has use for society in mind. For example, the fundamental NIH investments in IT are often called useinspired basic research.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
in 5 years, 10 years, or more. A recent National Research Council report emphasizes the critical role ofFederal investments in long-term research, noting “the long, unpredictable incubation period—requiring
steady work and funding—between initial exploration and commercial deployment.”68 It further notesthat “the time from first concept to successful market is often measured in decades”.68 Welldocumented examples of sustained fundamental research efforts that led to high-reward payoffs
include the World Wide Web and deep learning. In both cases, the basic foundations began in the
1960s; it was only after 30+ years of continued research efforts that these ideas materialized into thetransformative technologies witnessed today in many categories of AI.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants-supported research
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR COMPUTATIONAL PATHOLOGY
Image interpretation plays a central role in the pathologic diagnosis of cancer. Since the late 19th
century, the primary tool used by pathologists to make definitive cancer diagnoses is the
microscope. Pathologists diagnose cancer by manually examining stained sections of cancer tissues
to determine the cancer subtype. Pathologic diagnosis using conventional methods is laborintensive with poor reproducibility andquality concerns. New approaches use
fundamental AI research to build tools to
make pathologic analysis more efficient,accurate, and predictive. In the 2016
Camelyon Grand Challenge for metastatic
cancer detection,69 the top-performing
entry in the competition was an AI-based
computational system that achieved anerror rate of 7.5%.70 A pathologist
reviewing the same set of evaluation
images achieved an error rate of 3.5%.
Combining the predictions of the AI systemwith the pathologist lowered the error rate
AI significantly reduces pathologist error rate into down to 0.5%, representing an 85%
the identification of metastatic breast cancer
reduction in error (see image).71 This
from sentinel lymph node biopsies.
example illustrates how fundamental
research in AI can drive the developmentof high performing computational systems that offer great potential for making pathologicaldiagnoses more efficient and more accurate.

The following subsections highlight some of these areas. Additional categories of important AI research
are discussed in Strategies 2 through 6.

Advancing data-focused methodologies for knowledge discovery
As discussed in the Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan,9 many fundamental new
tools and technologies are needed to achieve intelligent data understanding and knowledge discovery.
Further progress is needed in the development of more advanced machine learning algorithms that can
68

Continuing Innovation in Information Technology (Washington D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2012), page11.
69
http://camelyon16.grand-challenge.org/.
70
D. Wang, A. Khosla, R. Gargeya, H. Irshad, and A. Beck, “Deep Learning for Identifying Metastatic Breast Cancer,”https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.05718v1.pdf.
71
The full results are presented at https://grand-challenge.org/site/camelyon16/results/.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
identify all the useful information hidden in big data. Many open research questions revolve around thecreation and use of data, including its veracity and appropriateness for AI system training. The veracityof data is particularly challenging when dealing with vast amounts of data, making it difficult for humans
to assess and extract knowledge from it. While much research has dealt with veracity through data
quality assurance methods to perform data cleaning and knowledge discovery, further study is needed
to improve the efficiency of data cleaning techniques, to create methods for discovering inconsistencies
and anomalies in the data, and to develop approaches for incorporating human feedback. Researchers
need to explore new methods to enable data and associated metadata to be mined simultaneously.
Many AI applications are interdisciplinary in nature and make use of heterogeneous data. Further
investigation of multi-modality machine learning is needed to enable knowledge discovery from a wide
variety of different types of data (e.g., discrete, continuous, text, spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal,graphs). AI investigators must determine the amount of data needed for training and to properly
address large-scale versus long-tail data needs. They must also determine how to identify and processrare events beyond purely statistical approaches; to work with knowledge sources (i.e., any type of
information that explains the world, such as knowledge of the law of gravity or of social norms) as well
as data sources, integrating models and ontologies in the learning process; and to obtain effective
learning performance with little data when big data sources may not be available.

Enhancing the perceptual capabilities of AI systems
Perception is an intelligent system’s window into the world. Perception begins with (possibly
distributed) sensor data, which comes in diverse modalities and forms, such as the status of the systemitself or information about the environment. Sensor data are processed and fused, often along with apriori knowledge and models, to extract information relevant to the AI system’s task such as geometricfeatures, attributes, location, and velocity. Integrated data from perception forms situational awarenessto provide AI systems with the comprehensive knowledge and a model of the state of the worldnecessary to plan and execute tasks effectively and safely. AI systems would greatly benefit fromadvancements in hardware and algorithms to enable more robust and reliable perception. Sensors must
be able to capture data at longer distances, with higher resolution, and in real time. Perception systems
need to be able to integrate data from a variety of sensors and other sources, including thecomputational cloud, to determine what the AI system is currently perceiving and to allow theprediction of future states. Detection, classification, identification, and recognition of objects remainchallenging, especially under cluttered and dynamic conditions. In addition, perception of humans must
be greatly improved by using an appropriate combination of sensors and algorithms, so that AI systems
can work more effectively with people.16 A framework for calculating and propagating uncertainty
throughout the perception process is needed to quantify the confidence level that the AI system has inits situational awareness and to improve accuracy.

Understanding theoretical capabilities and limitations of AI
While the ultimate goal for many AI algorithms is to address open challenges with human-like solutions,
we do not have a good understanding of what the theoretical capabilities and limitations are for AI and
the extent to which such human-like solutions are even possible with AI algorithms. Theoretical work isneeded to better understand why AI techniques—especially machine learning—often work well inpractice. While different disciplines (including mathematics, control sciences, and computer science) are
studying this issue, the field currently lacks unified theoretical models or frameworks to understand AI
system performance. Additional research is needed on computational solvability, which is anunderstanding of the classes of problems that AI algorithms are theoretically capable of solving, andlikewise, those that they are not capable of solving. This understanding must be developed in thecontext of existing hardware, in order to see how the hardware affects the performance of these18

NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
algorithms. Understanding which problems are theoretically unsolvable can lead researchers to develop
approximate solutions to these problems, or even open up new lines of research on new hardware forAI systems. For example, when invented in the 1960s, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) could only be
used to solve very simple problems. It only became feasible to use ANNs to solve complex problems
after hardware improvements such as parallelization were made, and algorithms were adjusted to makeuse of the new hardware. Such developments were key factors in enabling today’s significant advances
in deep learning.

Pursuing research on general-purpose artificial intelligence
AI approaches can be divided into “narrow AI” and “general AI.” Narrow AI systems perform individualtasks in specialized, well-defined domains, such as speech recognition, image recognition, andtranslation. Several recent, highly-visible, narrow AI systems, including IBM Watson and DeepMind's
AlphaGo, have achieved major feats.72,73 Indeed, these particular systems have been labeled“superhuman” because they have outperformed the best human players in Jeopardy and Go,
respectively. But these systems exemplify narrow AI, since they can only be applied to the tasks forwhich they are specifically designed. Using these systems on a wider range of problems requires asignificant re-engineering effort. In contrast, the long-term goal of general AI is to create systems thatexhibit the flexibility and versatility of human intelligence in a broad range of cognitive domains,
including learning, language, perception, reasoning, creativity, and planning. Broad learning capabilities
would provide general AI systems the ability to transfer knowledge from one domain to another and tointeractively learn from experience and from humans. General AI has been an ambition of researchers
since the advent of AI, but current systems are still far from achieving this goal. The relationshipbetween narrow and general AI is currently being explored; it is possible that lessons from one can beapplied to improve the other and vice versa. While there is no general consensus, most AI researchers
believe that general AI is still decades away, requiring a long-term, sustained research effort to achieveit.

Developing scalable AI systems
Groups and networks of AI systems may be coordinated or autonomously collaborate to perform tasks
not possible with a single AI system, and may also include humans working alongside or leading theteam. The development and use of such multi-AI systems creates significant research challenges inplanning, coordination, control, and scalability of such systems. Planning techniques for multi-AI systems
must be fast enough to operate and adapt in real time to changes in the environment. They should
adapt in a fluid manner to changes in available communications bandwidth or system degradation andfaults. Many prior efforts have focused on centralized planning and coordination techniques; however,these approaches are subject to single points of failure, such as the loss of the planner, or loss of thecommunications link to the planner. Distributed planning and control techniques are harder to achievealgorithmically, and are often less efficient and incomplete, but potentially offer greater robustness tosingle points of failure. Future research must discover more efficient, robust, and scalable techniques forplanning, control, and collaboration of teams of multiple AI systems and humans.

72

In 2011, IBM Watson defeated two players that are considered among the best human players in the Jeopardy!
game.
73
In 2016, AlphaGo defeated the reigning world champion of Go, Lee Se-dol. Notably, AlphaGo combines deeplearning and Monte Carlo search—a method developed in the 1980s—which itself builds on a probabilistic method
discovered in the 1940s.

19NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN

Fostering research on human-like AI
Attaining human-like AI requires systems to explain themselves in ways that people can understand.
This will result in a new generation of intelligent systems, such as intelligent tutoring systems andintelligent assistants that are effective in assisting people when performing their tasks. There is asignificant gap, however, between the way current AI algorithms work and how people learn andperform tasks. People are capable of learning from just a few examples, or by receiving formal
instruction and/or “hints” to performing tasks, or by observing other people performing those tasks.
Medical schools take this approach, for example, when medical students learn by observing anestablished doctor performing a complex medical procedure. Even in high-performance tasks such as
world-championship Go games, a master-level player would have played only a few thousand games totrain him/herself. In contrast, it would take hundreds of years for a human to play the number of games
needed to train AlphaGo. More foundational research on new approaches for achieving human-like AI
would bring these systems closer to this goal.
NSF-funded Framework on Game Theory for Security
Security is a critical concern around the world, whether it is the challenge of protecting ports, airports
and other critical infrastructure; protecting endangered wildlife, forests and fisheries; suppressing urban
crime; or security in cyberspace. Unfortunately, limited security resources prevent full security coverageat all times; instead, we must optimize the use of limited security resources. To that end, the "security
games" framework—based on basic
research in computational gametheory, while also incorporating
elements of human behavior modeling,
AI planning under uncertainty andmachine learning—has led to building
and deployment of decision aids forsecurity agencies in the United States
Worldwide applications
74
U.S. Coast Guardand around the world. For example,
the ARMOR system has been deployedat LAX airport since 2008, the IRIS
system for the Federal Air Marshals
Service has been in use since 2009, and
the PROTECT system for the U.S. Coast
Guard since 2011. Typically, given
limited security resources (e.g., boats,
LA Sheriff’s Department
LAX Airport Police
air marshals, police), and a large
number of targets of different values
Many types of applications may benefit from(e.g., different flights, different
game-theoretic approaches to security.
terminals at an airport), securitygames-based decision aids provide arandomized allocation or patrolling schedule that takes into account the weights of different targets andintelligent reaction of the adversary to the different security postures. These applications have beenshown to provide a significant improvement in performance of the different security agencies using avariety of metrics, e.g., capture rates, red teams, patrol schedule randomness, and others.74

Developing more capable and reliable robots
Significant advances in robotic technologies over the last decade are leading to potential impacts in a
multiplicity of applications, including manufacturing, logistics, medicine, healthcare, defense andnational security, agriculture, and consumer products. While robots were historically envisioned for74

M. Tambe, Security and Game Theory: Algorithms, Deployed Systems, Lessons Learned, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011).

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
static industrial environments, recent advances involve close collaborations between robots andhumans. Robotics technologies are now showing promise in their ability to complement, augment,enhance, or emulate human physical capabilities or human intelligence. However, scientists need tomake these robotic systems more capable, reliable, and easy-to-use.
Researchers need to better understand robotic perception to extract information from a variety of
sensors to provide robots with real-time situational awareness. Progress is needed in cognition andreasoning to allow robots to better understand and interact with the physical world. An improved ability
to adapt and learn will allow robots to generalize their skills, perform self-assessment of their current
performance, and learn a repertoire of physical movements from human teachers. Mobility andmanipulation are areas for further investigation so that robots can move across rugged and uncertain
terrain and handle a variety of objects dexterously. Robots need to learn to team together in a seamlessfashion and collaborate with humans in a way that is trustworthy and predictable.

Advancing hardware for improved AI
While AI research is most commonly associated with advances in software, the performance of AI
systems has been heavily dependent on the hardware upon which it runs. The current renaissance indeep machine learning is directly tied to progress in GPU-based hardware technology and its improved
memory,75 input/output, clock speeds, parallelism, and energy efficiency. Developing hardware
optimized for AI algorithms will enable even higher levels of performance than GPUs. One example is“neuromorphic” processors that are loosely inspired by the organization of the brain and,76 in somecases, optimized for the operation of neural networks.
Hardware advances can also improve the performance of AI methods that are highly data-intensive.
Further study of methods to turn on and off data pipelines in controlled ways throughout a distributed
system is called for. Continued research is also needed to allow machine learning algorithms toefficiently learn from high-velocity data, including distributed machine learning algorithms thatsimultaneously learn from multiple data pipelines. More advanced machine learning-based feedback
methods will allow AI systems to intelligently sample or prioritize data from large-scale simulations,experimental instruments, and distributed sensor systems, such as Smart Buildings and the Internet ofThings (IoT). Such methods may require dynamic I/O decision-making, in which choices are made in realtime to store data based on importance or significance, rather than simply storing data at fixed
frequencies.

Creating AI for improved hardware
While improved hardware can lead to more capable AI systems, AI systems can also improve theperformance of hardware.77 This reciprocity will lead to further advances in hardware performance,since physical limits on computing require novel approaches to hardware designs.78 AI-based methods
could be especially important for improving the operation of high performance computing (HPC)
systems. Such systems consume vast quantities of energy. AI is being used to predict HPC performance75

GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit, which is a power- and cost-efficient processor incorporating hundredsof processing cores; this design makes it especially well suited for inherently parallel applications, including most AI
systems.
76
Neuromorphic computing refers to the ability of hardware to learn, adapt, and physically reconfigure, taking
inspiration from biology or neuroscience.
77
M. Milano and L. Benini, "Predictive Modeling for Job Power Consumption in HPC Systems," Proceedings of High
Performance Computing: 31st International Conference, ISC High Performance, Vol. 9697, Springer, 2016.
78
These physical limits on computing are called Dennard scaling, and lead to high on-chip power densities and thephenomenon called “dark silicon”, where different parts of a chip will need to be turned off in order to limit
temperatures and ensure data integrity.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
and resource usage, and to make online optimization decisions that increase efficiency; more advanced
AI techniques could further enhance system performance. AI can also be used to create selfreconfigurable HPC systems that can handle system faults when they occur, without humanintervention.79
Improved AI algorithms can increase the performance of multi-core systems by reducing data
movements between processors and memory—the primary impediment to exascale computing systems
that operate 10 times faster than today’s supercomputers.80 In practice, the configuration of executionsin HPC systems are never the same, and different applications are executed concurrently, with the stateof each different software code evolving independently in time. AI algorithms need to be designed tooperate online and at scale for HPC systems.

Strategy 2: Develop Effective Methods for Human-AI Collaboration
While completely autonomous AI systems will be important in some application domains (e.g.,underwater or deep space exploration), many other application areas (e.g., disaster recovery andmedical diagnostics) are most effectively addressed by a combination of humans and AI systems working
together to achieve application goals. This collaborative interaction takes advantage of thecomplementary nature of humans and AI systems. While effective approaches for human-AI
collaboration already exist, most of these are “point solutions” that only work in specific environments
using specific platforms toward specific goals. Generating point solutions for every possible application
instance does not scale; more work is thus needed to go beyond these point solutions toward moregeneral methods of human-AI collaboration. The tradeoffs must be explored between designing generalsystems that work in all types of problems, requiring less human effort to build, and greater facility forswitching between applications, versus building a large number of problem-specific systems that may
work more effectively for each problem.
Future applications will vary considerably in the functional role divisions between humans and AI
systems, the nature of the interactions between humans and AI systems, the number of humans andother AI systems working together, and how humans and AI systems will communicate and sharesituational awareness. Functional role divisions between humans and AI systems typically fall into one of
the following categories:
1. AI performs functions alongside the human: AI systems perform peripheral tasks that support
the human decision maker. For example, AI can assist humans with working memory, short or
long-term memory retrieval, and prediction tasks.
2. AI performs functions when the human encounters high cognitive overload: AI systems perform
complex monitoring functions (such as ground proximity warning systems in aircraft), decision
making, and automated medical diagnoses when humans need assistance.
3. AI performs functions in lieu of a human: AI systems perform tasks for which humans have very
limited capabilities, such as for complex mathematical operations, control guidance for dynamic
79

A. Cocaña-Fernández, J. Ranilla, and L. Sánchez, "Energy-efficient allocation of computing node slots in HPC
clusters through parameter learning and hybrid genetic fuzzy system modeling," Journal of Supercomputing, 71(2015): 1163-1174.
80
Exascale computing refers to computing systems that can achieve at least a billion billion calculations per
second.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
systems in contested operational environments, aspects of control for automated systems in
harmful or toxic environments, and in situations where a system should respond very rapidly(e.g., in nuclear reactor control rooms).
Achieving effective interactions between humans and AI systems requires additional R&D to ensure thatthe system design does not lead to excessive complexity, undertrust, or overtrust. The familiarity ofhumans with the AI systems can be increased through training and experience, to ensure that thehuman has a good understanding of the AI system’s capabilities and what the AI system can and cannot
do. To address these concerns, certain human-centered automation principles should be used in thedesign and development of these systems:81
1. Employ intuitive, user-friendly design of human-AI system interfaces, controls, and displays.
2. Keep the operator informed. Display critical information, states of the AI system, and changes tothese states.
3. Keep the operator trained. Engage in recurrent training for general knowledge, skills, andabilities (KSAs), as well as training in algorithms and logic employed by AI systems and the
expected failure modes of the system.
4. Make automation flexible. Deploying AI systems should be considered as a design option for
operators who wish to decide whether they want to use them or not. Also important is thedesign and deployment of adaptive AI systems that can be used to support human operators
82 83
during periods of excessive workload or fatigue. ,Many fundamental challenges arise for researchers when creating systems that work effectively withhumans. Several of these important challenges are outlined in the following subsections.

Seeking new algorithms for human-aware AI
Over the years, AI algorithms have become able to solve problems of increasing complexity. However,there is a gap between the capabilities of these algorithms and the usability of these systems byhumans. Human-aware intelligent systems are needed that can interact intuitively with users andenable seamless machine-human collaborations. Intuitive interactions include shallow interactions, suchas when a user discards an option recommended by the system; model-based approaches that take into
account the users’ past actions; or even deep models of user intent that are based upon accurate humancognitive models. Interruption models must be developed that allow an intelligent system to interrupt
the human only when necessary and appropriate. Intelligent systems should also have the ability toaugment human cognition, knowing which information to retrieve when the user needs it, even when
they have not prompted the system explicitly for that information. Future intelligent systems must beable to account for human social norms and act accordingly. Intelligent systems can more effectively
work with humans if they possess some degree of emotional intelligence, so that they can recognize
their users’ emotions and respond appropriately. An additional research goal is to go beyond
interactions of one human and one machine, toward a “systems-of-systems”, that is, teams composedof multiple machines interacting with multiple humans.
Human-AI system interactions have a wide range of objectives. AI systems need the ability to represent
a multitude of goals, actions that they can take to reach those goals, constraints on those actions, andother factors, as well as easily adapt to modifications in the goals. In addition, humans and AI systems
81

C. Wickens and J. G. Hollands, "Attention, time-sharing, and workload," in Engineering, Psychology and Human
Performance (London: Pearson PLC, 1999), 439-479.
82
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/index.html.
83https://cloud1.arc.nasa.gov/intex-na/.

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must share common goals and have a mutual understanding of them and relevant aspects of theircurrent states. Further investigation is needed to generalize these facets of human-AI systems todevelop systems that require less human engineering.

Developing AI techniques for human augmentation
While much of the prior focus of AI research has been on algorithms that match or outperform people
performing narrow tasks, additional work is needed to develop systems that augment humancapabilities across many domains. Human augmentation research includes algorithms that work on a
stationary device (such as a computer); wearable devices (such as smart glasses); implanted devices(such as brain interfaces); and in specific user environments (such as specially tailored operating rooms).
For example, augmented human awareness could enable a medical assistant to point out a mistake in a
medical procedure, based on data readings combined from multiple devices. Other systems could
augment human cognition by helping the user recall past experiences applicable to the user’s current
situation.
Another type of collaboration between humans and AI systems involves active learning for intelligent
data understanding. In active learning, input is sought from a domain expert and learning is only
performed on data when the learning algorithm is uncertain. This is an important technique to reduce
the amount of training data that needs to be generated in the first place, or the amount that needs tobe learned. Active learning is also a key way to obtain domain expert input and increase trust in thelearning algorithm. Active learning has so far only been used within supervised learning—further
research is needed to incorporate active learning into unsupervised learning (e.g., clustering, anomaly
detection) and reinforcement learning.84 Probabilistic networks allow domain knowledge to be includedin the form of prior probability distributions. General ways of allowing machine learning algorithms toincorporate domain knowledge must be sought, whether in the form of mathematical models, text, orothers.

Developing techniques for visualization and AI-human interfaces
Better visualization and user interfaces are additional areas that need much greater development tohelp humans understand large-volume modern datasets and information coming from a variety ofsources. Visualization and user interfaces must clearly present increasingly complex data andinformation derived from them in a human-understandable way. Providing real-time results is importantin safety-critical operations and may be achieved with increasing computational power and connected
systems. In these types of situations, users need visualization and user interfaces that can quickly
convey the correct information for real-time response.
Human-AI collaboration can be applied in a wide variety of environments, and where there areconstraints on communication. In some domains, human-AI communication latencies are low andcommunication is rapid and reliable. In other domains (e.g., NASA’s deployment of the rovers Spirit andOpportunity to Mars), remote communication between humans and the AI system has a very highlatency (e.g., round trip times of 5-20 minutes between Earth and Mars), thus requiring the deployedplatform(s) to operate largely autonomously, with only high-level strategic goals communicated to theplatform. These communications requirements and constraints are important considerations for the
R&D of user interfaces.

Developing more effective language processing systems
Enabling people to interact with AI systems through spoken and written language has long been a goal
84

While supervised learning requires humans to provide the ground truth answers, reinforcement learning andunsupervised learning do not.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
of AI researchers. While significant advances have been made, considerable open research challenges
must be addressed in language processing before humans can communicate as effectively with AI
systems as they do with other humans. Much recent progress in language processing has been credited
to the use of data-driven machine learning approaches, which have resulted in successful systems that,for example, successfully recognize fluent English speech in quiet surroundings in real time. These
achievements, however, are only first steps toward reaching longer-term goals. Current systems cannot
deal with real-world challenges such as speech in noisy surroundings, heavily accented speech,
children’s speech, impaired speech, and speech for sign languages. The development of language
processing systems capable of engaging in real-time dialogue with humans is also needed. Such systems
will need to infer the goals and intentions of its human interlocutors, use the appropriate register, styleand rhetoric for the situation, and employ repair strategies in case of dialogue misunderstandings.
Further research is needed on developing systems that more easily generalize across different
languages. Additionally, more study is required on acquiring useful structured domain knowledge in aform readily accessible by language processing systems.
DARPA’s Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) Program Created the Technology that Apple
Commercialized as Siri
Computing technology is critical to every aspect of modern life, but the information systems we use dailylack the general, flexible abilities of human cognition. In the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL)
program,85 DARPA set about to create cognitive assistants that can learn from experience, reason, andbe told what to do via a speech interface. DARPA envisioned PAL technologies making information
systems more efficient and effective for users. DARPA and the PAL performers worked with military
operators to apply PAL technologies to problems of command and control, and PAL procedure learningtechnology was integrated in the U.S. Army's Command Post of the Future version Battle Command 10(see figure) and used around the world.

PAL procedure learning assistant learns reusable procedures by observing one example.
DARPA was also acutely aware of the commercial potential of the PAL technology, especially for mobile
applications where speech-based smartphone interaction would be required. DARPA strongly encouraged
PAL commercialization and in 2007, in response to DARPA’s encouragement, Siri Inc. was created tocommercialize PAL technology in a system that could assist a user by managing information andautomating tasks through a speech-based interface. In April 2010, Siri Inc. was acquired by Apple, whichfurther developed the technologies to make them an integral part–and the defining feature–of Apple’s
mobile operating system available on the iPhone and iPad.

Language processing advances in many other areas are also needed to make interactions between
humans and AI systems more natural and intuitive. Robust computational models must be built for
patterns in both spoken and written language that provide evidence for emotional state, affect, andstance, and for determining the information that is implicit in speech and text. New language processing
techniques are needed for grounding language in the environmental context for AI systems that operate85

https://pal.sri.com.

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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
in the physical world, such as in robotics. Finally, since the manner in which people communicate inonline interactions can be quite different from voice interactions, models of languages used in thesecontexts must be perfected so that social AI systems can interact more effectively with people.

Strategy 3: Understand and Address the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implicationsof AI
When AI agents act autonomously, we expect them to behave according to the formal and informal
norms to which we hold our fellow humans. As fundamental social ordering forces, law and ethics
therefore both inform and adjudge the behavior of AI systems. The dominant research needs involve
both understanding the ethical, legal, and social implications of AI, as well as developing methods for AI
design that align with ethical, legal, and social principles. Privacy concerns must also be taken into
account; further information on this issue can be found in the National Privacy Research Strategy.
As with any technology, the acceptable uses of AI will be informed by the tenets of law and ethics; thechallenge is how to apply those tenets to this new technology, particularly those involving autonomy,
agency, and control.
As illuminated in "Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence":"In order to build systems that robustly behave well, we of course need to decide what good
behavior means in each application domain. This ethical dimension is tied intimately toquestions of what engineering techniques are available, how reliable these techniques are, andwhat trade-offs are made—all areas where computer science, machine learning, and broader AI
expertise is valuable."86
Research in this area can benefit from multidisciplinary perspectives that involve experts from computerscience, social and behavioral sciences, ethics, biomedical science, psychology, economics, law, andpolicy research. Further investigation is needed in areas both inside and outside of the NITRD-relevant IT
domain (i.e., in information technology as well as the disciplines mentioned above) to inform the R&D
and use of AI systems and their impacts on society. The following subsections explore key information
technology research challenges in this area.

Improving fairness, transparency, and accountability-by-design
Many concerns have been voiced about the susceptibility of data-intensive AI algorithms to error andmisuse, and the possible ramifications for gender, age, racial, or economic classes. The proper collection
and use of data for AI systems, in this regard, represent an important challenge. Beyond purely datarelated issues, however, larger questions arise about the design of AI to be inherently just, fair,transparent, and accountable. Researchers must learn how to design these systems so that their actions
and decision-making are transparent and easily interpretable by humans, and thus can be examined forany bias they may contain, rather than just learning and repeating these biases. There are serious
intellectual issues about how to represent and “encode” value and belief systems. Scientists must also
study to what extent justice and fairness considerations can be designed into the system, and how toaccomplish this within the bounds of current engineering techniques.

86“An Open Letter: Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence,” The Future of Life Institute,
http://futureoflife.org/ai-open-letter/.

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Building ethical AI
Beyond fundamental assumptions of justice and fairness are other concerns about whether AI systems
can exhibit behavior that abides by general ethical principles. How might advances in AI frame new“machine-relevant” questions in ethics, or what uses of AI might be considered unethical? Ethics isinherently a philosophical question while AI technology depends on, and is limited by, engineering.
Within the limits of what is technologically feasible, therefore, researchers must strive to develop
algorithms and architectures that are verifiably consistent with, or conform to, existing laws, social
norms and ethics—clearly a very challenging task. Ethical principles are typically stated with varying
degrees of vagueness and are hard to translate into precise system and algorithm design. There are also
complications when AI systems, particularly with new kinds of autonomous decision-making algorithms,
face moral dilemmas based on independent and possibly conflicting value systems. Ethical issues vary
according to culture, religion, and beliefs. However, acceptable ethics reference frameworks can be
developed to guide AI system reasoning and decision-making, in order to explain and justify its
conclusions and actions. A multi-disciplinary approach is needed to generate datasets for training thatreflect an appropriate value system, including examples that indicate preferred behavior whenpresented with difficult moral issues or with conflicting values. These examples can include legal or
ethical “corner cases”, labeled by an outcome or judgment that is transparent to the user.87 AI needs
adequate methods for values-based conflict resolution, where the system incorporates principles that
can address the realities of complex situations where strict rules are impracticable.

Designing architectures for ethical AI
Additional progress in fundamental research must be made to determine how to best design
architectures for AI systems that incorporate ethical reasoning. A variety of approaches have beensuggested, such as a two-tier monitor architecture that separates the operational AI from a monitor
agent that is responsible for the ethical or legal assessment of any operational action.87 An alternative
view is that safety engineering is preferred, in which a precise conceptual framework for the AI agent
architecture is used to ensure that AI behavior is safe and not harmful to humans.88 A third method is toformulate an ethical architecture using set theoretic principles, combined with logical constraints on AI
system behavior that restrict action to conform to ethical doctrine.89 As AI systems become moregeneral, their architectures will likely include subsystems that can take on ethical issues at multiple
levels of judgment, including:90 rapid response pattern matching rules, deliberative reasoning for slower
responses for describing and justifying actions, social signaling to indicate trustworthiness for the user,and social processes that operate over even longer time scales to enable the system to abide by cultural
norms. Researchers will need to focus on how to best address the overall design of AI systems that alignwith ethical, legal, and societal goals.

Strategy 4: Ensure the Safety and Security of AI Systems
Before an AI system is put into widespread use, assurance is needed that the system will operate safely
and securely, in a controlled manner. Research is needed to address this challenge of creating AI
87

A. Etzione and O. Etzioni, “Designing AI Systems that Obey Our Laws and Values”, in Communications of the ACM
59 (9), (2016):29-31.
88
R. Y. Yampolsky, “Artificial Intelligence Safety Engineering: Why Machine Ethics is a Wrong Approach,” inPhilosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence, edited by V.C. Muller, (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag: 2013), 389-396.
89
R. C. Arkin, “Governing Legal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture,”Georgia Institute of Technology Technical Report, GIT-GVU-07-11, 2007.
90
B. Kuipers, “Human-like Morality and Ethics for Robots”, AAAI-16 Workshop on AI, Ethics and Society, 2016.

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systems that are reliable, dependable, and trustworthy. As with other complex systems, AI systems face91
important safety and security challenges due to:Complex and uncertain environments: In many cases, AI systems are designed to operate incomplex environments, with a large number of potential states that cannot be exhaustively
examined or tested. A system may confront conditions that were never considered during its
design.

Emergent behavior: For AI systems that learn after deployment, a system's behavior may be
determined largely by periods of learning under unsupervised conditions. Under suchconditions, it may be difficult to predict a system’s behavior.



Goal misspecification: Due to the difficulty of translating human goals into computer
instructions, the goals that are programmed for an AI system may not match the goals that wereintended by the programmer.



Human-machine interactions: In many cases, the performance of an AI system is substantiallyaffected by human interactions. In these cases, variation in human responses may affect thesafety of the system. 92

To address these issues and others, additional investments are needed to advance AI safety andsecurity,93 including explainability and transparency, trust, verification and validation, security against
attacks, and long-term AI safety and value-alignment.

Improving explainability and transparency
A key research challenge is increasing the “explainability” or “transparency” of AI. Many algorithms,
including those based on deep learning, are opaque to users, with few existing mechanisms for
explaining their results. This is especially problematic for domains such as healthcare, where doctors
need explanations to justify a particular diagnosis or a course of treatment. AI techniques such asdecision-tree induction provide built-in explanations but are generally less accurate. Thus, researchers
must develop systems that are transparent, and intrinsically capable of explaining the reasons for theirresults to users.

Building trust
To achieve trust, AI system designers need to create accurate, reliable systems with informative, userfriendly interfaces, while the operators must take the time for adequate training to understand system
operation and limits of performance. Complex systems that are widely trusted by users, such as manualcontrols for vehicles, tend to be transparent (the system operates in a manner that is visible to the user),credible (the system’s outputs are accepted by the user), auditable (the system can be evaluated),reliable (the system acts as the user intended), and recoverable (the user can recover control whendesired). A significant challenge to current and future AI systems remains the inconsistent quality of91

J. Bornstein, “DoD Autonomy Roadmap – Autonomy Community of Interest,” Presentation at NDIA 16th Annual
Science & Engineering Technology Conference, March 2015.
92
J. M. Bradshaw, R. R. Hoffman, M. Johnson, and D. D. Woods, “The Seven Deadly Myths of Autonomous
Systems," IEEE Intelligent Systems, 28, no. 3 (2013): 54-61.
93See, for instance: D. Amodei, C. Olah, J. Steinhardt, P. Christiano, J. Schulman, and D. Mane, "Concrete Problems
in AI Safety," 2016, arXiv: 1606.06565v2; S. Russell, D. Dewey, M. Tegmark, 2016, "Research Priorities for Robust
and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence," arXiv: 1602.03506; T. G. Dietterich, E. J. Horvitz, 2015, "Rise of Concerns
about AI: Reflections and Directions," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 58 No. 10; K. S.; R. Yampolsky (19December 2014), "Responses to catastrophic AGI risk: a survey," Physica Scripta, 90 (1).

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software production technology. As advances bring greater linkages between humans and AI systems,
the challenge in the area of trust is to keep pace with changing and increasing capabilities, anticipate
technological advances in adoption and long-term use, and establish governing principles and policies
for the study of best practices for design, construction, and use, including proper operator training forsafe operation.

Enhancing verification and validation
New methods are needed for verification and validation of AI systems. “Verification” establishes that asystem meets formal specifications, while “validation” establishes that a system meets the user’s
operational needs. Safe AI systems may require new means of assessment (determining if the system ismalfunctioning, perhaps when operating outside expected parameters), diagnosis (determining thecauses for the malfunction), and repair (adjusting the system to address the malfunction). For systems
operating autonomously over extended periods of time, system designers may not have consideredevery condition the system will encounter. Such systems may need to possess capabilities for selfassessment, self-diagnosis, and self-repair in order to be robust and reliable.
NASA Ames Research Center - PREDICTING FAILURES BEFORE THEY HAPPEN
NASA Ames Research Center developed a data-driven anomaly detection method called the Inductive
Monitoring System (IMS) in 2003 because of inadequacies in model-based methods for anomaly detection.
Since then, it has been deployed for system health monitoring applications within NASA including
monitoring the space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS), as well as non-NASA applications.

Test launch of Orion Crew Vehicle in2014, during which the IMS was used tomonitor electrical systems.

C-130 Hercules military transport plane, for which predictive
software was used to anticipate failures in a valve used to switch air
flow between engines.

In 2012, Comprehensive Engineering Management Solutions (CEMSol) licensed IMS, enhanced it, andteamed up with NASA Ames and Lockheed Martin to test it as an Integrated System Health Monitoring
system on the Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport plane. Lockheed Martin invested $70,000 in thetest and recovered 10 times that amount almost immediately in reduced maintenance costs and mission
delays.94

Securing against attacks
AI embedded in critical systems must be robust in order to handle accidents, but should also be secure
to a wide range of intentional cyber attacks. Security engineering involves understanding thevulnerabilities of a system and the actions of actors who may be interested in attacking it. While
94“System Health Monitor Predicts Failures Before They Happen,” Spinoff 2016, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2016/it_1.html.

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cybersecurity R&D needs are addressed in greater detail in the NITRD Cybersecurity R&D Strategic Plan,
some cybersecurity risks are specific to AI systems. For example, one key research area is “adversarialmachine learning” that explores the degree to which AI systems can be compromised by“contaminating” training data, by modifying algorithms, or by making subtle changes to an object thatprevent it from being correctly identified (e.g., prosthetics that spoof facial recognition systems). The
implementation of AI in cybersecurity systems that require a high degree of autonomy is also an area forfurther study. One recent example of work in this area is DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge that involved
AI agents autonomously analyzing and countering cyber attacks.95

Achieving long-term AI safety and value-alignment
AI systems may eventually become capable of “recursive self-improvement,” in which substantial
software modifications are made by the software itself, rather than by human programmers. To ensure
the safety of self-modifying systems, additional research is called for to develop: self-monitoringarchitectures that check systems for behavioral consistency with the original goals of human designers;
confinement strategies for preventing the release of systems while they are being evaluated; valuelearning, in which the values, goals, or intentions of users can be inferred by a system; and value
frameworks that are provably resistant to self-modification.

Strategy 5: Develop Shared Public Datasets and Environments for AI Training
and Testing
The benefits of AI will continue to accrue, but only to the extent that training and testing resources for
AI are developed and made available. The variety, depth, quality, and accuracy of training datasets andother resources significantly affects AI performance. Many different AI technologies require high-quality
data for training and testing, as well as dynamic, interactive testbeds and simulation environments.
More than just a technical question, this is a significant “public good” challenge, as progress would
suffer if AI training and testing is limited to only a few entities that already hold valuable datasets andresources, yet we must simultaneously respect commercial and individual rights and interests in thedata. Research is needed to develop high-quality datasets and environments for a wide variety of AI
applications, and to enable responsible access to good datasets and testing and training resources.
Additional open-source software libraries and toolkits are also needed to accelerate the advancement of
AI R&D. The following subsections outline these key areas of importance.

Developing and making accessible a wide variety of datasets to meet the needsof a diverse spectrum of AI interests and applications
The integrity and availability of AI training and testing datasets is crucial to ensuring scientifically reliable
results. The technical as well as the socio-technical infrastructure necessary to support reproducible
research in the digital area has been recognized as an important challenge—and is essential to AI
technologies as well. The lack of vetted and openly available datasets with identified provenance toenable reproducibility is a critical factor to confident advancement in AI.96 As in other data-intensive
sciences, capturing data provenance is critical. Researchers must be able to reproduce results with thesame as well as different datasets. Datasets must be representative of challenging real-world
applications, and not just simplified versions. To make progress quickly, emphasis should be placed on
95

https://cgc.darpa.mil.
Toward this end, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) issued a Request for Information
on novel training datasets and environments to advance AI. See https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/working-withiarpa/requests-for-information/novel-training-datasets-and-environments-to-advance-artificial-intelligence.
96

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making available already existing datasets held by government, those that can be developed with
Federal funding, and, to the extent possible, those held by industry.
The machine learning aspect of the AI challenge is often linked with “big data” analysis. Considering thewide variety of relevant datasets, it remains a growing challenge to have appropriate representation,access, and analysis of unstructured or semi-structured data. How can the data be represented—in
absolute as well as relative (context-dependent) terms? Current real-world databases can be highly
susceptible to inconsistent, incomplete, and noisy data. Therefore, a number of data preprocessing
techniques (e.g., data cleaning, integration, transformation, reduction, and representation) are
important to establishing useful datasets for AI applications. How does the data preprocessing impact
data quality, especially when additional analysis is performed?
Encouraging the sharing of AI datasets—especially for government-funded research—would likely
stimulate innovative AI approaches and solutions. However, technologies are needed to ensure safe
sharing of data, since data owners take on risk when sharing their data with the research community.
Dataset development and sharing must also follow applicable laws and regulations, and be carried out inan ethical manner. Risks can arise in various ways: inappropriate use of datasets, inaccurate or
inappropriate disclosure, and limitations in data de-identification techniques to ensure privacy andconfidentiality protections.

Making training and testing resources responsive to commercial and public
interests
With the continuing explosion of data, data sources, and information technology worldwide, both thenumber and size of datasets are increasing. The techniques and technologies to analyze data are notkeeping up with the high volume of raw information sources. Data capture, curation, analysis, andvisualization are all key research challenges, and the science needed to extract valuable knowledge fromenormous amounts of data is lagging behind. While data repositories exist, they are often unable to deal
with the scaling up of datasets, have limited data provenance information, and do not support
semantically rich data searches. Dynamic, agile repositories are needed.
One example of the kind of open/sharing infrastructure program that is needed to support the needs of
AI research is the IMPACT program (Information Marketplace for Policy and Analysis of Cyber-risk &Trust) developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).97 This program supports the global
cyber security risk research effort by coordinating and developing real-world data and information
sharing capabilities, including tools, models, and methodologies. IMPACT also supports empirical data
sharing between the international cybersecurity R&D community, critical infrastructure providers, andtheir government supporters. AI R&D would benefit from comparable programs across all AI
applications.

Developing open-source software libraries and toolkits
The increased availability of open-source software libraries and toolkits provides access to cutting-edge
AI technologies for any developer with an Internet connection. Resources such as the Weka toolkit,98
MALLET,99 and OpenNLP,100 among many others, have accelerated the development and application of
AI. Development tools, including free or low-cost code repository and version control systems, as well as
free or low-cost development languages (e.g., R, Octave, and Python) provide low barriers to using and97

https://www.dhs.gov/csd-impact.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/weka/.
99
http://mallet.cs.umass.edu.
100
https://opennlp.apache.org.
98

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extending these libraries. In addition, for those who may not want to integrate these libraries directly,
any number of cloud-based machine learning services exist that can perform tasks such as image
classification on demand through low-latency web protocols that require little or no programming foruse. Finally, many of these web services also offer the use of specialized hardware, including GPU-based
systems. It is reasonable to assume that specialized hardware for AI algorithms, including neuromorphic
processors, will also become widely available through these services.
Together, these resources provide an AI technology infrastructure that encourages marketplaceinnovation by allowing entrepreneurs to develop solutions that solve narrow domain problems without
requiring expensive hardware or software, without requiring a high level of AI expertise, and permitting
rapid scaling-up of systems on demand. For narrow AI domains, barriers to marketplace innovation are
extremely low relative to many other technology areas.
To help support a continued high level of innovation in this area, the U.S. government can boost efforts
in the development, support, and use of open AI technologies. Particularly beneficial would be open
resources that use standardized or open formats and open standards for representing semantic
information, including domain ontologies when available.
Government may also encourage greater adoption of open AI resources by accelerating the use of open
AI technologies within the government itself, and thus help to maintain a low barrier to entry forinnovators. Whenever possible, government should contribute algorithms and software to open source
projects. Because government has specific concerns, such as a greater emphasis on data privacy andsecurity, it may be necessary for the government to develop mechanisms to ease government adoptionof AI systems. For example, it may be useful to create a task force that can perform a “horizon scan”
across government agencies to find particular AI application areas within departments, and thendetermine specific concerns that would need to be addressed to permit adoption of such techniques bythese agencies.

Strategy 6: Measure and Evaluate AI Technologies through Standards andBenchmarks
Standards, benchmarks, testbeds, and their adoption by the AI community are essential for guiding andpromoting R&D of AI technologies. The following subsections outline areas where additional progress
must be made.

Developing a broad spectrum of AI standards
The development of standards must be hastened to keep pace with the rapidly evolving capabilities andexpanding domains of AI applications. Standards provide requirements, specifications, guidelines, orcharacteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that AI technologies meet critical objectives forfunctionality and interoperability, and that they perform reliably and safely. Adoption of standards
brings credibility to technology advancements and facilitates an expanded interoperable marketplace.
One example of an AI-relevant standard that has been developed is P1872-2015 (Standard Ontologies
for Robotics and Automation), developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
This standard provides a systematic way of representing knowledge and a common set of terms anddefinitions. These allow for unambiguous knowledge transfer among humans, robots, and other artificial
systems, as well as provide a foundational basis for the application of AI technologies to robotics.
Additional work in AI standards development is needed across all subdomains of AI.

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Standards are needed to address:
Software engineering: to manage system complexity, sustainment, security, and to monitor andcontrol emergent behaviors;Performance: to ensure accuracy, reliability, robustness, accessibility, and scalability;

Metrics: to quantify factors impacting performance and compliance to standards;



Safety: to evaluate risk management and hazard analysis of systems, human computerinteractions, control systems, and regulatory compliance;Usability: to ensure that interfaces and controls are effective, efficient, and intuitive;Interoperability: to define interchangeable components, data, and transaction models via
standard and compatible interfaces;Security: to address the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, as well as
cybersecurity;

Privacy: to control for the protection of information while being processed, when in transit, or
being stored;Traceability: to provide a record of events (their implementation, testing, and completion), andfor the curation of data; and

Domains: to define domain-specific standard lexicons and corresponding frameworks

Establishing AI technology benchmarks
Benchmarks, made up of tests and evaluations, provide quantitative measures for developing standards
and assessing compliance to standards. Benchmarks drive innovation by promoting advancements
aimed at addressing strategically selected scenarios; they additionally provide objective data to track theevolution of AI science and technologies. To effectively evaluate AI technologies, relevant and effective
testing methodologies and metrics must be developed and standardized. Standard testing methods willprescribe protocols and procedures for assessing, comparing, and managing the performance of AI
technologies. Standard metrics are needed to define quantifiable measures in order to characterize AI
technologies, including but not limited to: accuracy, complexity, trust and competency, risk anduncertainty; explainability; unintended bias; comparison to human performance; and economic impact.
It is important to note that benchmarks are data driven. Strategy 5 discusses the importance of datasets
for training and testing.
As a successful example of AI-relevant benchmarks, the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) has developed a comprehensive set of standard test methods and associated performance
metrics to assess key capabilities of emergency response robots. The objective is to facilitate
quantitative comparisons of different robot models by making use of statistically significant data on
robot capabilities that was captured using the standard test methods. These comparisons can guidepurchasing decisions and help developers to understand deployment capabilities. The resulting test
methods are being standardized though the ASTM International Standards Committee on Homeland
Security Applications for robotic operational equipment (referred to as standard E54.08.01). Versions of
the test methods are used to challenge the research community through the RoboCup Rescue Robot
League competitions,101 which emphasize autonomous capabilities. Another example is the IEEE Agile
Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC),102 a joint effort between IEEE and NIST, which
101102

http://www.robocup2016.org/en/.
http://robotagility.wixsite.com/competition.

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promotes robot agility by utilizing the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robot planning. A corefocus of this competition is to test the agility of industrial robot systems, with the goal of enabling thoseon the shop floors to be more productive, more autonomous, and requiring less time from shop floor
workers.
While these efforts provide a strong foundation for driving AI benchmarking forward, they are limited bybeing domain-specific. Additional standards, testbeds, and benchmarks are needed across a broader
range of domains to ensure that AI solutions are broadly applicable and widely adopted.

Increasing the availability of AI testbeds
The importance of testbeds was stated in the Cyber Experimentation of the Future report:103 “Testbeds
are essential so that researchers can use actual operational data to model and run experiments on realworld system[s] … and scenarios in good test environments.” Having adequate testbeds is a need acrossall areas of AI. The government has massive amounts of mission-sensitive data unique to government,
but much of this data cannot be distributed to the outside research community. Appropriate programs
could be established for academic and industrial researchers to conduct research within secured andcurated testbed environments established by specific agencies. AI models and experimental methods
could be shared and validated by the research community by having access to these test environments,
affording AI scientists, engineers, and students unique research opportunities not otherwise available.

Engaging the AI community in standards and benchmarks
Government leadership and coordination is needed to drive standardization and encourage its
widespread use in government, academia, and industry. The AI community–made up of users, industry,
academia, and government—must be energized to participate in developing standards and benchmark
programs. As each government agency engages the community in different ways based on their role andmission, community interactions can be leveraged through coordination in order to strengthen theirimpact. This coordination is needed to collectively gather user-driven requirements, anticipate
developer-driven standards, and promote educational opportunities. User-driven requirements shape
the objectives and design of challenge problems and enable technology evaluation. Having community
benchmarks focuses R&D to define progress, close gaps, and drive innovative solutions for specificproblems. These benchmarks must include methods for defining and assigning ground truth. The
creation of benchmark simulation and analysis tools will also accelerate AI developments. The results ofthese benchmarks also help match the right technology to the user’s need, forming objective criteria forstandards compliance, qualified product lists, and potential source selection.
Industry and academia are the primary sources for emerging AI technologies. Promoting andcoordinating their participation in standards and benchmarking activities are critical. As solutions
emerge, opportunities abound for anticipating developer- and user-driven standards through sharing
common visions for technical architectures, developing reference implementations of emerging
standards to show feasibility, and conducting pre-competitive testing to ensure high-quality andinteroperable solutions, as well as to develop best practices for technology applications.
One successful example of a high-impact, community-based, AI-relevant benchmark program is the Text
Retrieval Conference (TREC),104 which was started by NIST in 1992 to provide the infrastructurenecessary for large-scale evaluation of information retrieval methodologies. More than 250 groups haveparticipated in TREC, including academic and commercial organizations both large and small. The
standard, widely available, and carefully constructed set of data put forth by TREC has been credited
103

SRI International and USC Information Sciences Institute, “Cybersecurity Experimentation of the Future (CEF):
Catalyzing a New Generation of Experimental Cybersecurity Research”, Final Report, July 31, 2015.
104
http://trec.nist.gov.

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with revitalizing research on information retrieval.105, 106 A second example is the NIST periodic
benchmark program in the area of machine vision applied to biometrics,107 particularly facerecognition.108 This began with the Face Recognition Technology (FERET) evaluation in 1993, which
provided a standard dataset of face photos designed to support face recognition algorithm development
as well as an evaluation protocol. This effort has evolved over the years into the Face Recognition
Vendor Test (FRVT),109 involving the distribution of datasets, hosting of challenge problems, andconducting of sequestered technology evaluations. This benchmark program has contributed greatly tothe improvement of facial recognition technology. Both TREC and FRVT can serve as examples ofeffective AI-relevant community benchmarking activities, but similar efforts are needed in other areas ofAI.
It is important to note that developing and adopting standards, as well as participating in benchmark
activities, comes with a cost. R&D organizations are incentivized when they see significant benefit.
Updating acquisition processes across agencies to include specific requirements for AI standards inrequests for proposals will encourage the community to further engage in standards development andadoption. Community-based benchmarks, such as TREC and FRVT, also lower barriers and strengthen
incentives by providing types of training and testing data otherwise inaccessible, fostering healthy
competition between technology developers to drive best-of-breed algorithms, and providing objective
and comparative performance metrics for relevant source selections.

Strategy 7: Better Understand the National AI R&D Workforce Needs
Attaining the needed AI R&D advances outlined in this strategy will require a sufficient AI R&D
workforce. Nations with the strongest presence in AI R&D will establish leading positions in theautomation of the future. They will become the frontrunners in competencies like algorithm creationand development; capability demonstration; and commercialization. Developing technical expertise will
provide the basis for these advancements.
While no official AI workforce data currently exist, numerous recent reports from the commercial andacademic sectors are indicating an increased shortage of available experts in AI. AI experts arereportedly in short supply,110 with demand expected to continue to escalate.66 High tech companies arereportedly investing significant resources into recruiting faculty members and students with AI
expertise.111 Universities and industries are reportedly in a battle to recruit and retain AI talent.112
Additional studies are needed to better understand the current and future national workforce needs for
AI R&D. Data is needed to characterize the current state of the AI R&D workforce, including the needs ofacademia, government, and industry. Studies should explore the supply and demand forces in the AI
workplace, to help predict future workforce needs. An understanding is needed of the projected AI R&D
workforce pipeline. Considerations of educational pathways and potential retraining opportunities should
be included. Diversity issues should also be explored, since studies have shown that a diverse
105

E. M. Voorhees and D. K. Harman, TREC Experiment and Evaluation in Information Retrieval (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2005).
106
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-data-matters.html.
107
http://biometrics.nist.gov.
108
http://face.nist.gov.
109
P. J. Phillips, “Improving Face Recognition Technology,” Computer, 44 No. 3 (2011): 84-96.
110“Startups Aim to Exploit a Deep-Learning Skills Gap”, MIT Technology Review, January 6, 2016.
111“Artificial Intelligence Experts are in High Demand”, The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2015.
112“Million dollar babies: As Silicon Valley fights for talent, universities struggle to hold on to their stars”, The
Economist, April 2, 2016.

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information technology workforce can lead to improved outcomes.113 Once the current and future AI
R&D workforce needs are better understood, then appropriate plans and actions can be considered toaddress any existing or anticipated workforce challenges.

113

J. W. Moody, C. M. Beise, A. B. Woszczynski, and M. E. Myers, "Diversity and the information technology
workforce: Barriers and opportunities," Journal of Computer Information Systems, 43 (2003): 63-71.

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Recommendations
The Federal Government in its entirety can support the seven strategic priorities of this Plan and achieve
its vision by supporting the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1: Develop an AI R&D implementation framework to identify S&T
opportunities and support effective coordination of AI R&D investments, consistent with
Strategies 1-6 of this plan.
Federal agencies should collaborate through NITRD to develop an R&D implementation framework thatfacilitates coordination and progress on the R&D challenges outlined in this plan. This will enableagencies to easily plan, coordinate, and collaborate in support of this strategic plan. The
implementation framework should take into account the R&D priorities of each agency, based on their
missions, capabilities, authorities, and budget. Based on the implementation framework, funding
programs may need to be established for coordinated execution of the national research agenda for AI.
To help implement this Strategic Plan, NITRD should consider forming an interagency working groupfocused on AI, in coordination with existing working groups.

Recommendation 2: Study the national landscape for creating and sustaining a healthy AI
R&D workforce, consistent with Strategy 7 of this plan.
A healthy and vibrant AI R&D workforce is important to addressing the R&D strategic challenges
outlined in this report. While some reports have indicated a potential growing shortage of AI R&D
experts, no official workforce data exists to characterize the current state of the AI R&D workforce, theprojected workforce pipeline, and the supply and demand forces in the AI workforce. Given the role of
the AI R&D workforce in addressing the strategic priorities identified in this plan, a better understandingis needed for attaining and/or maintaining a healthy AI R&D workforce. NITRD should study how best to
characterize and define the current and future AI R&D workforce needs, developing additional studies orrecommendations that can ensure a sufficient R&D workforce to address the AI needs of the Nation. As
indicated by the outcome of the studies, appropriate Federal organizations should then take steps toensure that a healthy national AI R&D workforce is created and maintained.

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Acronyms‬‬
3-D
AI
ANNs
ARIAC
ARMOR
ASTM
ATM
BRAIN
CEMSolCOMPETES
CoT
DARPA
DHS
DoD
DOE
DOT
FERET
FRVT
GPS
GPU
HPC
I/O
IBM
IEEE
IMPACT
IMS
IoT
IRIS
ISS
IT
KSA
LAX
MALLET
NASA
NCO
NIH
NIST
NITRD
NLP
NRL
NSF

Three Dimensional
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Neural Networks
Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition
Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes
American Society of the International Association for Testing and Materials
Automated Teller Machine
Brain Research through Advance Innovative Neurotechnologies
Comprehensive Engineering Management Solutions
America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence inTechnology Education and Science
Committee on Technology
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Defense
Department of Energy
Department of Transportation
Face Recognition Technology
Face Recognition Vendor Test
Global Positioning System
Graphics Processing UnitHigh Performance Computing
Input/Output
International Business Machines Corporation
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Information Marketplace for Policy and Analysis of Cyber-risk & Trust
Inductive Monitoring System
Internet of Things
Intelligent Randomization in International SchedulingInternational Space Station
Information Technology
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
Los Angeles World Airports
Machine Learning for Language Toolkit
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Coordination Office for NITRD
National Institutes of HealthNational Institute of Standards and Technology
Networking Information Technology Research and Development
Natural Language Processing
Naval Research Laboratory
National Science Foundation
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NATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLAN
NSTC
OMB
OSTP
PAL
PROTECT
R&D
RFI
S&T
STEM
TREC
U.S.

National Science and Technology Council
Office of Management and Budget
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Personalized Assistant that Learns
Port Resilience Operational / Tactical Enforcement to combat Terrorism
Research and Development
Request For Information
Science and Technology
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Text Retrieval Conference
The United States of America

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