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TechCrunch
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Amazon attempts to lure AI researchers with $110M in grants and credits
- Amazon Web Services has launched a new grant program for AI research called Build on Trainium. AWS will award $110 million total to institutions, scientists, and students researching AI.
- AWS will give up to $11 million each in Trainium credits to universities with which it has strategic partnerships, along with individual grants up to $500,000 to the broader AI research community.
- AWS is establishing a “research cluster” of up to 40,000 Trainium chips research teams and students can access through self-managed reservations.
- Gadi Hutt, senior director at AWS’ Annapurna Labs, says Build on Trainium is intended to furnish researchers with the hardware support they need to pursue their work.
- This initiative comes as academic institutions in the AI field lack the considerable infrastructure tech giants have at their disposals.
- Although Build on Trainium is advertising for Trainium, it is not clear if it will do much to bridge the gap between AI academia and industry.
- Nearly 70% of people with Ph.D.s in AI end up in private industry, lured not only by competitive salaries but access to essential compute and data. The largest AI models developed now come from industry more than 90% of the time.
- There’s little reason to think that this will change anytime soon, but efforts are underway to establish the US National AI Research Resource, a $2.6 billion initiative that’d provide AI researchers and students with access to computational resources and datasets.
- Researchers have pushed for legal and technical protections to scrutinize AI without fear that vendors will suspend their accounts or threaten legal action.
- AWS’ grant selection process is opaque, and the committee of “AI and application practitioners” will review proposals and select “the most impactful and promising projects that will help advance machine learning science forward.
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