The Trump administration has identified nearly a billion dollars of current research and development spending from non-defense agencies as part of a supplement to the president’s FY 2020 budget request, nearly double what the government spent on this emerging technology three years ago.
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios said the budget document released Tuesday provided the government’s first agency-by-agency look at non-defense AI spending and serves as part of an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February to prioritize AI in the federal R&D portfolio.
The budget document, Kratsios said, serves as an “important mechanism” for getting a big-picture look at total government spending on AI research, not “aspirational expenditures.”