US government pledges $5 billion for AI for science as controversial funding overhaul sparks debate

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research

I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. Overall federal funding for scientific research is set to decline in 2027, the most senior White House science figure said on Wednesday. However, the government pledged to spend $5 billion on promoting artificial intelligence (AI) in science. Michael Kratsios, the White House's Science and Technology Advisor, told the House Science, Space and Technology committee that the money will be drawn from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, as well as other federal agencies. The goal is to produce "the premier AI for science ecosystem in the world," he said. The funding will be earmarked for research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities, the White House said in a statement. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The remarks go some way to help define the Genesis Mission, a White House effort announced in November aimed at promoting U.S. dominance in AI, but at the time had no defined budget. The administration hopes to bolster AI in research conducted by government science agencies, such as NASA and the Department of Energy, Kratsios said. The administration is also interested in funding a "scientifically relevant quantum computer," he added. At the hearing, Kratsios fielded lawmakers' questions about major cuts to NSF grants under the Trump administration. When asked about nearly $1 billion in held up NSF grants, as well as the "very large discrepancies" between planned spending and actual allocations for 2026, Kratsios said he wasn't aware of the details. The NSF must be "more deliberative" on what research receives funding, he said. A point of contention was a proposed change to how science grants are awarded that has drawn widespread criticism from researchers. If enacted, the Office of Management and Budget regulations would give political appointees, not peer reviewers, the power to choose which research proposals receive federal funding. Thousands of scientists, including several Nobel laureates, have criticized the rule change as damaging to U.S. science. Kratsios said the changes are necessary due to a "real decline in the types of grants that want to achieve groundbreaking or out of the box type of ideas," and said that NSF awards will continue to be merit-based.

US to spend $5 billion on health, construction research powered by AI

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. will spend $5 billion to tackle long-standing scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes of chronic diseases, accelerate drug discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement. Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, chief technology adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview with Reuters. Fifteen federal ⁠agencies will be involved in the project, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Defense and Interior. "The White House is helping bring together all of the different agencies that work on different domains to make them part of this larger effort on AI for science," Kratsios said. The Trump administration also plans to overhaul how the U.S. government funds federal research by supporting more individual scientists and the use of AI, rather than universities, according to a White House report released Tuesday night, authored by Kratsios. This would give the ⁠Trump administration more control over how the money is used. "Federal support for science must be politically accountable," the report said. During his second term Trump has tried to exert more control over how federal research dollars are allocated. Federal courts have pushed back, with an appeals panel saying in January the ⁠Trump administration cannot cut federal grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health to universities engaged in scientific and medical research. AI models need data to identify patterns, generate predictions and automate decisions. The ⁠U.S. government is home to some of the largest data sets in the world, including records about chemicals, critical minerals and patient health. The $5 billion research initiative is an opportunity to ⁠train AI models on that information and use those algorithms to answer scientific questions, Kratsios said. Microsoft will donate $40 million in AI computing credits over three years to support the effort, according to a company statement. Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Stephen Coates Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Disrupted * Public Policy Courtney Rozen Thomson Reuters Courtney Rozen reports on the world's largest technology companies from Washington, D.C., focusing on the relationship between the tech industry and the U.S. government. She reported on DOGE and the federal workforce during the first year of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term. Prior to joining Reuters, she was a White House correspondent at Bloomberg Government. She graduated from American University with a master's degree in journalism. Contact: [email protected]

Trump Plan for 'Golden Age' of Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities

President Trump's science adviser told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Trump administration intended to drastically overhaul the country's approach to scientific research, including by shifting research funding away from universities toward individual researchers and private companies. At a House hearing, Michael Kratsios echoed points he laid out in a report released Tuesday, titled "Science: A New Golden Age." He said the administration would prioritize artificial intelligence, robotics and nuclear energy while reducing the government's focus on what he called "life sciences." "Our ability to make transformational breakthroughs here in the United States has slowed," Mr. Kratsios told lawmakers in the hearing on Wednesday. "Maybe we should be testing other ways to make breakthroughs than what we've been doing for so many years." Democrats countered that the Trump administration had harmed scientific research by firing staff members at federal science agencies, seeking deep cuts to research programs, canceling or freezing grants, punishing universities that Mr. Trump is unhappy with, and pushing some of the best researchers in the United States to relocate to other countries. "Let me propose an alternative title: 'Unleashing the Golden Age of Science in the People's Republic of China,'" Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House science committee, told Mr. Kratsios at the start of the hearing. "This administration has been systematically destroying the U.S. science enterprise." The White House billed Tuesday's report as "the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in over 80 years," since one written by Vannevar Bush, the organizer of the Manhattan Project, which produced the world's first atomic bomb. Dr. Bush's 1945 report set the stage for the current system, in which the government funds basic research, universities conduct it, and private companies commercialize it. Mr. Kratsios' proposal to reduce the role of universities would upend that system, which has been in place since the end of World War II. His call for the administration to de-prioritize "life sciences," which encompass molecular biology, genetics and other fields in biomedicine, as well as clinical trials aimed at testing new therapies, raised alarms among biomedical researchers and academic medical centers. They fear it will mean less funding for the National Institutes of Health. Jeremy M. Berg, who led the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, an arm of N.I.H., during the Bush and Obama administrations, called the report "tremendously misinformed." He said Mr. Kratsios was ignoring the serendipity of science by zeroing in so closely on artificial intelligence. "I think they're trying to turn it into a venture capital model," said Dr. Berg, an expert in computational and systems biology medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. "Why the federal government should be investing in that, I don't know." Unlike most presidential science advisers, Mr. Kratsios is not a scientist. He has a background in Silicon Valley, where he worked at an investment fund run by Peter Thiel, the prominent venture capitalist who backed Mr. Trump's first presidential bid. Mr. Kratsios' educational background is also unlike that of his predecessors: While previous science advisers held doctorates, Mr. Kratsios has a bachelor's degree in politics from Princeton, and no other degrees. The report from Mr. Kratsios, who also leads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, begins with a broad indictment of the federal government's approach to funding scientific research. Mr. Kratsios argued that while investments in research had increased in recent decades, the results of that investment had failed to keep pace. "Scientific productivity has slowed," he wrote. Among the examples he cites: "Despite massive increases in biomedical funding since the 1990s, the rate of significant breakthroughs appears to have slowed, and drug approvals have flatlined." To address that problem, Mr. Kratsios called for reducing the amount of time researchers have to spend applying for grants, and directing science agencies to come up with ways to better measure the returns on their investments. He also directed federal science agencies to focus on a handful of priorities set by the White House, including physical sciences, chemistry and biological sciences. Those fields, he wrote, were crucial to what he called the Trump administration's "national missions" -- a list that includes artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, robotics, quantum computing and space exploration. The report is less clear on the areas of scientific research for which the federal government should reduce funding. It says federal agencies "should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over the life sciences." Spokesmen for the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not answer questions about what they meant by "life sciences" and "foundational research." Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees U.S. biomedical research enterprise, said the report aligned with his own emphasis on using artificial intelligence to uncover the root causes of what he calls an "epidemic" of chronic disease, especially among children. "America will lead the next generation of medical discovery by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence," he said in a statement. The report does not address the Trump administration's decision to fire large numbers of staff members at scientific agencies. It calls for the government to invest in young researchers, without noting that the administration fired scores of young scientists and terminated hundreds of grants to early career researchers. It is also silent on the more than 40 percent funding cuts sought by the White House at the National Science Foundation, as well as a proposal in May from the White House Office of Management and Budget that federal grants for scientific research be screened by political appointees, to block initiatives that "promote anti-American values." In Wednesday's hearing, Democrats pushed Mr. Kratsios on those points, asking how they aligned with his pledge to restore what he called "gold standard science." Letting political appointees block grants they disagree with is "simply incompatible with any kind of commitment to robust scientific research," Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina said to Mr. Kratsios. "The victories that you're touting are merely cheap, shiny distractions." In response, Mr. Kratsios did not directly defend the administration's proposal for political oversight grants. "I look forward to working closely with O.M.B. to ensure that our enterprise continues to remain world class and trustworthy and accountable," he said. One area in which Mr. Kratsios indicated a measure of disagreement with the administration's actions was on the pace of grants from the National Science Foundation. Representative George Whitesides, Democrat of California, displayed charts comparing the rate at which money had been awarded this year with previous years, asking Mr. Kratsios to explain why the funding had slowed. When Mr. Kratsios said that was a question for the National Science Foundation, Mr. Whitesides called the answer unacceptable. "You're the president's science adviser," Mr. Whitesides said. "Why is this happening?" "I do see these charts, and nothing would make me happier to make sure that we are getting closer to where we were in previous years," Mr. Kratsios said. "I'll do everything that I possibly can to help move that line, because I think it's important for us to get the appropriate dollars out to scientists." Adam Sella and William J. Broad contributed reporting.

White House wants to shift billions of dollars of research funding away from 'slow consensus peer review' and into individual scientists and AI

AI should be at the forefront of scientific research, White House says * The White House wants to reallocate hundreds of billions of dollar worth of federal funding away from universities and peer reviewed research panels * The funding would instead go to individual scientists and AI-native laboratories * The credibility of the plan is undermined by the US government's track record on science and AI The Trump administration has unveiled plans to shift around $200 billion dollars of research funding into individual scientists and a 'national AI-for-science initiative'. The move would pull funding from university research and 'slow' consensus peer review panels in an effort to stay ahead of China, which is making strides to catch up in AI and quantum computing technology. Plans were laid out in a new report, dubbed 'Science: A New Golden Age', presented to Donald Trump by the Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Michael Kratsios. Funding to be moved to AI and individual scientists Peer-reviewed study has been the basis of American research since the end of World War II, but Krastios says that science must again be reinvented in a way "that frees American scientists to do their most groundbreaking work, revives the national pursuit of ambitious scientific missions, and positions the United States to lead the AI-driven scientific revolution that will define the next century." The report is a suggestion of the direction the Trump administration wants to shape the future of federal funding for science, but the federal funding budget is underwritten by Congress. The point of peer reviewed research is to prevent research from being performed in an echo chamber, to spot errors and misinformation, and to provide criticism on research methodology and bias. By moving away from peer review and placing funding with individual scientists (likely vetted by the government to provide conclusions that toe the party line), this shift in how academic research is conducted will undermine US scientific credibility both at home and on the global stage. The report also suggested providing full funding for the 'Genesis Mission', which seeks to unite "National Labs, industry, academia, and more to harness AI for breakthroughs in energy dominance, discovery science, and national security" by creating "AI-native scientific institutions better suited to an era of machine-augmented research." There are obviously use-cases for AI in science, but the US government does not have the best track record of using AI for science. The US government has already been previously caught out using AI to create documents presented in hearings, with a research report presented by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being riddled with errors and citing studies that did not exist - a classic case of AI hallucination. Trump has also made significant deviations to the direction of climate science in the US, with peer-reviewed authoritative assessments on the US national climate being deleted from US government websites, the US withdrawal from the Paris Accord, alongside funding and staffing cuts across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Mauna Loa Observatory, and multiple climate monitoring centers. In order to maintain the forefront of AI development, the US is also experiencing a mass-buildout of AI data centers to provide capacity for usage, training, and development of frontier models. But this has presented a major challenge in providing enough power to sites already running, as well as planned sites that will require multi-gigawatt connections. Trump has encouraged AI companies and data center developers to lean into fossil fuels to provide extra energy capacity, with many AI campuses deploying natural gas burning turbines. Some of these sites operate at noise levels matching an international airport 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with local residents reporting illnesses and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vertigo, and sleep disruption as a result of the infrasound emitting from turbines. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Trump administration says 15 agencies will get $5bn in 'AI for science' effort

Administration will also overhaul how US government funds federal research by supporting individual scientists and AI over universities The US will spend $5bn to tackle longstanding scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, ⁠the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes ⁠of chronic diseases, accelerate drug ⁠discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement. Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized ⁠datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, chief technology adviser to Donald Trump, in an ⁠interview with Reuters. Fifteen federal agencies will be involved in the project, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Defense and Interior. "The White House is helping bring together all of the different agencies that work on different domains to make them part of this larger effort on AI for science," Kratsios said. The Trump administration also plans to overhaul how the US government funds federal research by supporting more individual scientists and the use of AI, rather than universities, according to a White House report released Tuesday night, authored by Kratsios. This would give the Trump administration more control over how the money is used. "Federal support for science must be politically accountable," the report said. During his second term, Trump has tried to exert more control over how federal research dollars are allocated. Federal courts have pushed back, with an appeals panel saying in January the Trump administration cannot cut federal grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health to ⁠universities engaged in scientific and medical research. AI models need data to identify patterns, generate predictions and automate decisions. The US government is home to some of the largest datasets in the world, including records about chemicals, critical minerals and patient health. The $5bn research initiative is an opportunity to train AI models on that information and use those algorithms to answer scientific questions, Kratsios said. Microsoft will donate $40m in AI computing credits over three years to support the effort, according to a company statement.

The Trump administration is revamping the era of the 'gentleman scientist.' It'll cost $200 billion | Fortune

The "Golden Age of Science" had no scientists. For nearly three centuries, discoverers like Darwin and Copernicus, still wrestling to break free from Greek thought, called themselves "natural philosophers." They made discoveries based on their own curiosity. The purest of them answered to no one: Robert Boyle had an earl's fortune, Henry Cavendish a banking one, Charles Darwin a family inheritance that bought him 20 years to dwell on barnacles. This era of the "gentleman scientist," of course, was limited to those with wealth, but that was considered a kind of purity -- that nothing but curiosity fueled their discoveries. So when the word "scientist" was coined in 1833, half in jest, many of the men it described refused to answer to it. They could see what it implied: a salary, an institution -- a profession, with all the red tape and standards the 19th century's Enlightenment was so eager to build. Indeed, science would go on to get departments, degrees, grant applications, and, eventually, a federal budget. The Trump administration wants to bring back this era of the gentleman scientist. In a 123-page report published Tuesday, titled "Science: A New Golden Age," the White House argued the professionalized machine those stuffy Victorians built had calcified into exactly what the gentlemen feared, a system in which researchers spend half their working hours on paperwork. Its solution is to fund the person, not the institution. They want fellowships to follow particular scientists, as opposed to sticking to a university; they want reviewers to get "golden tickets," meaning the power for a single believer to fund an unconventional proposal the panel would've otherwise killed; they want "fast grants for agencies." They also want the government to charter new institutions outside the universities entirely, called "X-labs," small, focused outfits built to chase a single hard problem and then dissolve, the way a Victorian gentleman might have devoted a decade to one obsession and moved on. "Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it," the authors wrote. But the report's gentleman scientist has a tool -- nay, a colleague -- the Victorians couldn't dream of. The document argues AI should become a "new instrument of scientific discovery," a partner that will help scientific enterprise maximize the "marginal returns to intelligence." The White House put $5 billion behind the idea after the report's release, though The Wall Street Journal calculates the overall cost of the overhaul at $200 billion. Indeed, lay scientists and mathematicians have recently made some breakthroughs in their fields with large language models. An Anthropic employee and mathematician recently overturned a nearly century-old axiom with the help of Claude, prompting Garry Tan, the founder of startup-funder Y-Combinator, to announce the era of the gentleman scientist is back. Many scientists lauded the proposal on social media for its depth. Alec Stapp, a cofounder of the Institute for Progress, a think tank whose recommendations appear in the report, praised its funding experiments, but said it misses on international scientists -- a nod to the administration's continued attack on immigration. "Being the top destination for global science talent is America's superpower," Stapp wrote on X. If scientists are leaving the U.S. after grad school, he argued, the answer is to make it easier for them to stay. Some academics were less pleased. Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Chicago, wrote on X the report shifts support from basic to applied research in a way that "misunderstands the scientific enterprise," and its proposals undermine peer review "in favor of political control and oversight." Durlauf signed an open letter opposing what it calls the administration's "assault on science," which now has more than 10,000 signatories, including two Nobel laureates. "As scientists, we are committed to a discipline that is decentralized and self-scrutinizing," the letter reads. "Instead, this administration mandates a centralized system serving the political beliefs of the President and the whims of those in power."