Researchers argue National AI Research Resource will entrench Big Tech

Artificial intelligence research groups are urging the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force to reconsider investing in shared computing and data infrastructure, which they say will subsidize the tech giants that control it rather than democratize access. The AI Now Institute of New York University and Data & Society Research Institute submitted a joint response to the task force’s request for information, encouraging it to pause efforts to establish NAIRR until it explores alternative investments in AI research and puts controls in place to ensure the accountable and ethical use of government data. Despite the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Science Foundation‘s insistence NAIRR will democratize access to AI infrastructure for the benefit of academics and startups, researchers say this is jeopardized by the government continuing to license that infrastructure from technology giants. Only tech giants have the billions of dollars to employ hundreds of site reliability engineers and data center operators to maintain AI infrastructure, while building the software, tools and application programming interfaces that make up the AI research environment. That same infrastructure gives tech giants the ability to aggregate dossiers of personal information on global populations and use them to increase profits, while declining to reveal how such systems work citing corporate secrecy.