NSF AI Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI)

What are the algorithms of intelligence? A decade of progress in AI created systems that solve an impressive variety of tasks. But for more brain-like AI with strong generalization, we must connect to the revolution in our understanding of the brain. The last decade has seen spectacular progress in interrogating neural activity, circuitry, and learning, yet our neuroscience insights have only informed AI superficially. Conversely, our advanced AI has only begun to impact neuroscience. Our Artificial and Natural Intelligence Institute will meet the urgent need for new paradigms of interdisciplinary research between neuroscience and AI. This will accelerate progress in both fields, and broaden the transformative impact on society in the next decade. Our research efforts concentrate on five interrelated research thrusts. The first three relate to challenges of generalization: Robust and Flexible Learning, Continual learning, and Reasoning about Causality and Uncertainty. The fourth thrust characterizes Neural Mechanisms and how they affect computation. The fifth thrust is concentrated on problems from, and solutions for, specific Application Domains, especially Language and Vision. ARNI is part of a cohort of National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF, in collaboration with government agencies and private sector leaders, has now invested close to half a billion dollars in the AI institutes ecosystem—an investment that expands a collaborative AI research network into almost every state.