As artificial intelligence technology continues to forge ahead, Greater Washington players in both the public and private sectors are hoping to tap in and make their own investments with new research centers emerging across the region.
Organizations such as Accenture Federal Services, the government consultancy arm of Ireland-based Accenture PLC (NYSE: ACN), and local universities and research organizations are directing millions of dollars into helping keeping this region at the forefront of what many consider to be some of the most transformative technology of our times.
A large chunk is coming from the federal government, where the National Science Foundation announced a $140 million investment to build seven AI institutes around the country, including $20 million over five years to a University of Maryland-led team to establish the NSF Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS).
That team, which includes George Washington University, Morgan State University and Cornell University, is allocated $4.24 million in fiscal 2023 alone to help build more governance into the AI technology to ensure its ethical and responsible use. With 12 employees, the new center will have dual homes in both the Foggy Bottom and College Park universities, annexing a wing of the latter's Department of Computer Science building. More specifics will be worked out this summer.
“Our goal is to develop a blueprint for how trustworthy AI systems can be built and governed, that then other people can use,” said Hal Daumé III, the lead principal investigator and director of TRAILS and a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland.
Daumé said plans are to use the center to fund community involvement in the development of AI. In practice, that means dollars going directly to researchers at the participating universities to conduct projects around generative AI and better understand its ramifications, as well as to community partners helping with the work.
At Accenture Federal, the Arlington firm has set up its new Federal Generative AI Center of Excellence, a remote group that may showcase technology from time to time at the Accenture Federal Digital Studio at 1201 New York Ave. NW.
Michael Thieme, the company's lead on generative AI, couldn’t put a price tag on the company's investment into AI or the center, which will work with AFS clients. But with its roughly 50 employees, he said, if he were to add up their average salaries, it would amount to millions. And similarly to the academic alliance, the group will focus on how to build more responsible AI, he said.
“The AI stuff has a lot of positive applications that we want to work through and a lot of negative applications that we need to help our customers understand and be cognizant of,” he said.
For Accenture, generative AI is hardly new. Thieme was working on the tech when he came to Accenture as chief technology officer of Novetta, a McLean advanced data and analytics company that Accenture Federal Services bought in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. But what's inspiring AFS, and Thieme's team of scientists and engineers, to push forward with its new focus and center now is generative AI's ability to create and shape text, not just images.
“When open AI released ChatGBT, it was kind of a flashpoint that called all of our attention to these new capabilities that were coming together,” Thieme said.
Yet another center, the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at D.C. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, was announced last month with a $5 million commitment from CSIS trustee Romesh Wadhwani, an AI tech entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley.
Led by Director Gregory Allen, the newly formed center will hire industry experts to assess AI and its security, governance and diplomacy challenges to develop recommendations for policymakers — addressing issues that the "generation-defining" tech creates, requiring "unprecedented attention," according to CSIS President and CEO John Hamre.
Even more generative AI experts and followers from the likes of Google, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Microsoft, Salesforce and Apple will soon descend upon the nation's capital, set to host the massive VOICE & AI Conference in the first week of September.
