We’re excited to announce that OpenMined is among the 25 organizations partnering with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and 10 other federal agencies on the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot program. This groundbreaking initiative represents a critical step toward democratizing access to AI resources and accelerating responsible AI innovation in the United States.
What is the NAIRR Pilot?
The NAIRR pilot is designed to provide U.S.-based researchers and educators with access to essential AI resources, including:
- Advanced computing infrastructure
- High-quality datasets
- State-of-the-art AI models
- Specialized software tools
- Training programs and user support
This shared research infrastructure aims to strengthen and democratize access to critical resources necessary for responsible AI discovery and innovation. By connecting researchers with the tools they need, the NAIRR pilot will power innovative AI research and inform the design of the full NAIRR ecosystem. The initiative directly responds to President Biden’s Executive Order 14110, which directed the NSF to launch the NAIRR pilot within 90 days.
Focus Areas
The NAIRR pilot’s operations are organized into four key focus areas:
- NAIRR Open: Enabling open AI research through access to diverse AI resources via the NAIRR Pilot Portal and coordinated allocations.
- NAIRR Secure: Co-led by NIH and DOE, focusing on AI research requiring privacy and security-preserving resources and assembling exemplar privacy-preserving resources.
- NAIRR Software: Facilitating and investigating the interoperable use of AI software, platforms, tools, and services for NAIRR pilot resources.
- NAIRR Classroom: Reaching new communities through education, training, user support, and outreach.
OpenMined’s Resource Contributions to NAIRR
As part of our commitment to the NAIRR pilot, OpenMined is offering technical infrastructure and education services for small or large consortia—at a minimum, groups of two or more researchers—to use each others’ private data for research. Through our collaboration, you will receive:
- A slice of compute credits for each of your members (if needed)
- Software to facilitate distributed, privacy-preserving data science across the consortia’s data
- A training session teaching your members how to perform distributed learning and privacy-preserving data science across the data hosted by your consortia’s members
Our resources are best suited for pairs or larger groups of researchers who would like to jointly perform research while keeping each others’ data private. Example use cases may include:
- Consortia of academics who would like to jointly train a model on data distributed across institutions
- Academics who would like to allow another researcher the ability to study their data without revealing it (for research reproducibility or other use cases)
- Academics who would like to evaluate a model while keeping the evaluation data set private
Interested researchers can learn more here or can reach out to @LaceyStrahm on our community Slack.
Why This Matters
The NAIRR seeks to democratize access to essential AI tools and assets that are currently concentrated in a few powerful institutions. This democratization ensures that talented researchers from diverse backgrounds can contribute to AI innovation, strengthening U.S. global competitiveness while expanding the community of people working on responsible AI development. By bringing together government agencies, academia, industry, and nonprofits in a collaborative ecosystem, NAIRR enables cross-sector partnerships that can accelerate progress in applying AI to significant social challenges like healthcare and environmental sustainability.
Like ARPANET in the 1960s, which democratized computing access and ultimately led to the internet, NAIRR represents a foundational infrastructure investment that could enable transformative innovations while ensuring the benefits of AI advancement are distributed more broadly across American society.
Looking Forward
The NAIRR pilot represents a significant step forward in creating an AI ecosystem that benefits all Americans and strengthens the United States’ position as a global leader in AI innovation. We believe that by democratizing access to AI resources, we can unlock the full potential of diverse talent across the country and drive responsible innovation that addresses our most pressing challenges.
Stay tuned for updates on our involvement in this groundbreaking initiative!
