PCAST Releases Report on Supercharging Research: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Meet Global Challenges

Today, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report that recommends new actions to help our nation responsibly harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate scientific discovery. This report comes in response to President Biden’s charge in his Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. The report outlines a forward-looking approach to advance the safe and effective use of AI to empower human researchers, explore scientific possibilities, and to mitigate risks in an increasingly digital world.

The report provides examples of specific research areas in which AI is already having important impacts and also discusses practices needed to ensure effective and responsible use of AI technologies.

Specifically, PCAST’s recommendations include:

• Expanding existing efforts, such as the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, to broadly and equitably share basic AI resources to benefit the full diversity of academic researchers, national laboratories, and smaller companies and non-profit organizations.

• Expanding secure and responsible access of anonymized federal data sets for critical research needs with appropriate protections and safeguards.

• Supporting both basic and applied research in AI that involves collaborations across academia, industry, national laboratories, and federal agencies as outlined in the vision for the NAIRR developed by the NAIRR Task Force.

• Adopting principles of responsible, transparent, and trustworthy AI use throughout all stages of the scientific research process to manage the risks of inaccurate, biased, harmful, or non-replicable findings from scientific uses of AI.
• Encouraging innovative approaches to integrating AI assistance into scientific workflows to facilitate human researchers creatively conducting high quality science that utilizes AI assistance responsibly.

To view a full copy of the PCAST report, please click here.

To view PCAST’s Letter to the President and the Executive Summary of the report, please click here.

PCAST is the sole body of advisors from outside the federal government charged with making science, technology, and innovation policy recommendations to the President. Learn more about their work here.