National Academies report urges NSF to co-build sovereign open-source LLM for science
thoefler · x · 2026-11-14
ETH Zurich professor Torsten Hoefler says a US National Academies committee he served on has released "NSF Cyberinfrastructure in an Age of Change and Challenge," calling on NSF's national compute infrastructure to co-build a sovereign, open-source LLM plus agentic AI tools for science.
Key points from the report slides:
- Context: trillions in commercial cloud/AI investment, LLMs transforming science, rising semiconductor costs, end of Dennard scaling, and waning US research leadership.
- Recommendations: strategically focus investments; build a national computing ecosystem (sustain four regional HPC/AI centers, embrace cloud bursting and commercial interoperability); support the "Missing Middle" of underserved users; pursue bold steps for AI infrastructure including open-source AI models for science; invest in cyberinfrastructure professionals and HPC/AI training; develop interagency and public-private partnerships.
The full consensus study report is downloadable from nationalacademies.org, with a BoF session at SC26 next week.
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