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GAITHERSBURG, Md. — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has expanded its collaboration with the nonprofit MITRE Corporation as a part of its efforts to make sure U.S. management in synthetic intelligence (AI). Through this award, NIST is investing $20 million to determine two facilities to advance the supply of AI-based expertise options to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and cybersecurity for crucial infrastructure.
“This investment will help accelerate the application of AI in American manufacturing and help drive the American manufacturing renaissance,” mentioned Deputy Secretary of Commerce Paul Dabbar. “We can harness AI to increase the competitiveness of our manufacturers and attract investment in America.”
The award is a vital step in implementing NIST’s Strategy for American Technology Leadership in the 21st Century to speed up the progress of crucial and rising applied sciences from growth to adoption, in shut partnership with U.S. business.
“Our goal is to remove barriers to American AI innovation and accelerate the application of our AI technologies around the world,” mentioned Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Acting NIST Director Craig Burkhardt. “This new agreement with MITRE will focus on enhancing the ability of U.S. companies to make high-value products more efficiently, meet market demands domestically and internationally, and catalyze discovery and commercialization of new technologies and devices.”
The AI Economic Security Center for U.S. Manufacturing Productivity and the AI Economic Security Center to Secure U.S. Critical Infrastructure from Cyberthreats will drive the event and adoption of AI-driven instruments, or “agents,” in these two nationwide precedence areas. The facilities will develop the expertise evaluations and developments which might be essential to successfully shield U.S. dominance in AI innovation, tackle threats from adversaries’ use of AI, and cut back dangers from reliance on insecure AI.
NIST will depend on current assets to construct on its experience and carry ahead suggestions in the White House’s July 2025 America’s AI Action Plan, together with Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation and Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure.
These are vital first steps in NIST’s programmatic plan to coordinate innovation-based analysis efforts for accelerating the event and deployment of crucial applied sciences in areas of nationwide precedence. Building on its lengthy historical past of public-private collaboration, NIST plans to make use of adaptive and versatile partnerships to develop, pilot and implement new advances to determine U.S. management and innovation in crucial and rising applied sciences reminiscent of AI, quantum data science and expertise, and biotechnology.
The partnership will leverage MITRE’s long-standing mission to function federally funded analysis and growth facilities. NIST expects the AI facilities to allow breakthroughs in utilized science and superior expertise and ship disruptive progressive options to sort out essentially the most urgent challenges dealing with the nation.
This settlement expands NIST’s portfolio of AI-focused applications and builds on the private-public partnerships leveraged by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), which leads evaluations of U.S. and adversary techniques and contributes to NIST’s efforts to develop greatest practices. CAISI has established voluntary agreements with a number of builders of modern or “frontier” AI fashions to allow collaborative analysis and voluntary testing of business fashions for precedence nationwide safety capabilities.
In the approaching months, NIST plans to announce its award for the AI for Resilient Manufacturing Institute, by means of the Manufacturing USA program. With as much as $70 million in funding over a five-year interval from NIST and not less than that a lot in nonfederal funding, the institute will deliver collectively experience in AI, manufacturing and provide chain networks to advertise manufacturing resilience.
Combined, these efforts will improve NIST’s core analysis, requirements and expertise mission to sort out obstacles stopping U.S. innovation and management in AI.