Trump Administration Cuts Threaten US AI Research and Competitiveness

Trump axes AI staff and research funding, and scientists are worried

How these latest layoffs and budget cuts could weaken the American AI talent pipeline. Ongoing Trump administration cuts to government agencies risk creating new collateral damage: the future of AI research. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the February layoffs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) of 170 people -- including several AI experts -- will inevitably throttle funding for AI research. Since 1950, the NSF has awarded grants that led to massive tech breakthroughs, including the algorithmic basis for Google and the building blocks for AI chatbots. Also: This 5-year tech industry forecast predicts some surprising winners - and losers The firings are expected to impact current research and budding AI talent in the US. "Almost every employee with an advanced degree at every American AI firm has been a part of NSF-funded research at some point in their career," Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center, which focuses on national security, told Bloomberg. "Cutting those grants is robbing the future to pay the present." The cuts leave fewer staff to award grants; Bloomberg noted that some review panels and project funding have already been halted. Similarly to impending layoffs at NIST and the AI Safety Institute, the firings impact teams created under the Chips and Science Act, which invested in domestic machine learning and manufacturing efforts. Industry experts and former NSF employees told Bloomberg they found the move confusing given how it weakens US AI development -- despite how vocal the Trump administration has been about ramping up "America's global AI dominance." Rumors of massive budget cuts to NSF are also circulating. Also: What TSMC's $165 billion investment in the US may mean for the chip industry That said, it's hard to tell how intentional or strategic the cuts to AI-specific staff are. As has been the case at many other government agencies, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) targets probationary employees (who have fewer legal protections) and projects that it appears to misunderstand as DEI initiatives simply for using words like "diversity" in their program descriptions. An NSF staffer clarified to Bloomberg that, by "diversity of researchers," these projects refer to people from "different fields, states and disciplines." Just last week, OpenAI and Anthropic partnered with the US National Labs to test the companies' latest models for scientific discovery. With the recent launch of ChatGPT Gov, OpenAI's chatbot for local, state, and federal agency use, and Project Stargate, a $500 billion data center investment plan, the Trump administration appears to be shrinking existing AI infrastructure within the government while investing in partnerships with private AI companies -- a move that has already undermined government regulation and oversight, and could concentrate AI power too singularly with those companies over time.

Trump's Funding Cuts Threaten America's AI Competitiveness

For more than a year, Courtney Gibbons was focused on exploring the mathematical foundations of artificial intelligence -- the kind of arcane research that can sometimes be overlooked until it helps pave the way for the next ChatGPT. But in February, Gibbons was one of 170 employees fired at the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that has long been a linchpin of domestic technology research and investment. Many of these were probationary staffers and part-time experts like Gibbons who had been handpicked over the past two years specifically for their expertise in AI. About a quarter worked inside groups central to deploying NSF funding for AI research, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg. The wave of layoffs pushed by the Trump administration, combined with looming budget cuts, is now threatening the ability of the NSF to sustain AI research at the scale necessary for the US to remain competitive, according to industry watchers and current and former employees at the organization. These moves risk severing the talent pipeline that feeds the industry's most cutting-edge companies and ceding leadership in artificial intelligence to China at a time when President Donald Trump has made it a priority to bolster US AI supremacy, largely through a deregulatory agenda. "This directly contradicts other Trump administration priorities," said Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Almost every employee with an advanced degree at every American AI firm has been a part of NSF-funded research at some point in their career. Cutting those grants is robbing the future to pay the present."

Trump Administration cuts may threaten AI research efforts | TechCrunch

The Trump Administration has fired a number of National Science Foundation employees who had been handpicked for their expertise in AI, threatening the agency's ability to sustain key AI research, Bloomberg reported. One of the affected departments inside NSF, called the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, was instrumental in funneling government grants focused on AI. Many review panels have been postponed or canceled as a result of the layoffs, stalling funding for some AI projects, according to Bloomberg. AI experts have criticized the Trump Administration's recent cuts to scientific grant-making, and in particular, reductions championed by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. In a post on X, Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate, called for Musk to be expelled from the British Royal Society "because of the huge damage he is doing to scientific institutions in the U.S."