This week with NSF Director Panchanathan

This week, network operators and vendors, academia, federal agencies and public interest representatives gathered at the Federal Communications Commission for a workshop co-hosted by NSF and the FCC to discuss the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence for communications networks and consumers.

NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan delivered opening remarks lauding the long-standing partnership between NSF and FCC, as well as the seven decades of NSF investments that have powered discovery and innovation across all fields of science and engineering — including the critical modern communication network technologies society has come to depend on. He expressed that now is the time to collaborate across sectors to unlock the unprecedented opportunities AI has in revolutionizing the nation's communications technology and securing U.S. global leadership in the 6G and beyond.

Shortly after the director's remarks, Margaret Martonosi, NSF's assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, delivered the keynote address. She spoke of how cross-sector partnerships fueling programs — like NSF's Resilient & Intelligent NextG Systems — are accelerating research to increase U.S. competitiveness through public-private partnerships. By building upon these partnerships — and through continued investments in AI — the nation's STEM enterprise can build upon foundational AI research, including the computer science that makes AI more accurate, trustworthy and safe to use.

Through multisector collaboration, this research will be critical in ensuring that these emerging technologies provide the greatest benefit to society now and well into the future.