Transformative Research Proposed in Federal Spending Increase for AI and Quantum

(Fortune) The increase in the US budget for A.I. and quantum computing comes at a tradeoff to investing into other areas of science. Sridhar Tayur, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who specializes in business technology and quantum computing, says the White House’s proposed budget is geared toward building the infrastructure for sophisticated data analysis that could potentially impact multiple disciplines. Although some areas of scientific research are being cut, the White House hopes that A.I. and quantum computing’s potential impact could be so big, it would make up for the reduced overall spending.
Tayur commends the proposed federal spending increase in A.I. and quantum because he believes the government is crucial for funding transformative research, which tech giants like Google and Facebook don’t do despite spending billions of dollars annually on A.I.
Darrell West, the vice president and director of the left-leaning policy think tank Brookings Institution, believes the White House is right in placing its bets on A.I. and quantum computing, saying that cutting-edge data crunching will be the core technology that drives other fields.