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The federal government ends funding for an ambitious AI project

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The Trump administration has pledged to increase investment in artificial intelligence, but it recently cut off federal funding for a program dedicated to solving weather-related problems with AI. NPR's Katia Riddle explains.

KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Sometimes people ask Amy McGovern how she, a self-described weather geek and meteorologist, became an expert in artificial intelligence.

AMY MCGOVERN: I've been doing AI since before AI was cool is my answer to that. I got my Ph.D. in AI stuff, and I got my Ph.D. in 2002.

RIDDLE: Fast-forward to today, McGovern directs a weather institute that uses deep learning AI. They take into account data such as air and water temperature and time of day to make precise forecasts. One example of the kind of thing they work on - sea turtles.

MCGOVERN: That's a good one because everybody loves sea turtles.

RIDDLE: In the winter, sometimes the water gets unusually cold off the Bay of Corpus Christi in Texas. Turtles swimming below the surface get so cold that they stop moving and float to the top, where they can get hit by boats.

MCGOVERN: And if they're running over all these cold-stunned turtles, they're killing a lot of endangered turtles. And so we have an AI method that will, with confidence, predict these cold-stunning events, and they can use it to close the bay. And actually, the rescuers go out and rescue the turtles.

RIDDLE: McGovern says this effort helps save hundreds of thousands of dollars by limiting the amount of time the bay has to be closed for turtle-related delays. The weather institute is a collaboration across seven universities. Other things they're working on include better prediction for hail storms and hurricanes and improving visibility for cars and planes in weather events. In June, McGovern got an email from the National Science Foundation. That's the agency funding the initiative.

MCGOVERN: I pulled open my phone to check my email, and I just stood there. I said, I can't believe this just came in.

RIDDLE: Funding for the program, said the email, would not be renewed. They had already received $20 million. They were expecting 20 million more over the next five years.

MCGOVERN: And I thought, how can you possibly not fund us for this? You know, it's not like we've been a grant that's just studying something esoteric that's not changing lives.

ALAN GERARD: That kind of research, you know, takes a long time to spin up because it's very complicated.

RIDDLE: Alan Gerard is a former director at the National Severe Storms Laboratory at NOAA. He is not involved in the project.

GERARD: Making these, you know, critical lifesaving decisions about tornadoes, flash floods, you know, hurricanes, it's really hard to see how somebody - another group is going to be able to spin any of that up very quickly.

RIDDLE: The Trump administration has promised to invest billions in AI initiatives. In response to an inquiry about why this program was cut, the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement that the program, quote, "wasted taxpayer funds to place climate change hysteria in AI models," unquote. Current and former staff at NSF who spoke with NPR had other theories. Kevin Johnson quit his job at the agency recently. He doesn't know why this specific program was cut, but he says he's not surprised.

KEVIN JOHNSON: It sounds like it's something that could have been done in anticipation of a reduced budget.

RIDDLE: While federal spending has been broadly approved for FY26, exactly how much money agencies will get is in question. The president is proposing NSF's budget should be reduced by over half. The agency funds all kinds of science from STEM education and workforce development to biotechnology and advanced manufacturing. With these big cuts on the horizon, Johnson says program officers, like himself, started to rein in their own spending.

JOHNSON: The threats that the budget was going to be cut absolutely affected the decision-making within our division, and I would imagine within pretty much every directorate at NSF.

RIDDLE: The National Science Foundation budget for next year hangs in the balance with the government shutdown. But Johnson adds, even the threat of future cuts is already hurting the cause of science today. Katie Riddle NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Katia Riddle
[Copyright 2024 NPR]