The recently announced Genesis Mission sets out to transform how science is done in the US. Yet it's a mission that places national labs—and not universities—in the driving seat.
For those interested in the topic, in my latest piece, The Genesis Mission, I supplement this view by examining why the U.S. has revived the institutional architecture of the Manhattan and Apollo programs, and how this will reshape scientific discovery, the global balance of power, the AI race with China, and Europe’s eroding competitiveness.
This is the new map of power. And it’s being drawn right now.
If we look at advances in most areas of artificial intelligence, the national labs have been almost entirely absent. Confined by narrow definitions of "mission", their focus has been on translating advances from universities and industries into adoption by the armed forces and the intelligence community.
Transforming them into risk-taking hubs of basic research and rapid innovation will require less rather than more mission focus. It will require empowering individual scientists to pursue the directions they believe will be most important. It will require reducing the barriers to the movement of people from industry into/out of the labs.
It may also require hiring different kinds of researchers who are willing to operate outside their comfort zones. Personnel is policy.
One reason universities are able to respond rapidly to new challenges is that every year an entire new cohort of students arrives (and another leaves). Another strength of research universities is that professors, in their teaching role, revisit the fundamentals every year. In so doing, they uncover the cracks and gaps that suggest fundamentally new research directions. Neither the national labs nor the tech companies are forced to think about these questions.
Ha - of course research conducted by federal labs is much less concerned with intellectual/academic freedom than it is achieving goals - and this is one of the challenges with serendipitous discovery. This is where I'd like to think there's a win-win through working with universities.
While I have the greatest respect for Arizona State University and you personally, it is fairly clear to me that our entire research university system is going to be fundamentally transformed or even eliminated as AI evolves to possible AGI and ASI. What I see is the private sector and national labs taking over their teaching and research roles - using many AI Agents to do what was previously done by professors, fellows and graduate students. The current administration would, I suspect, like nothing better and is likely to encourage that change. It's hard to imagine a function for human educators and researchers if AI agents are functioning at brilliant teacher and researcher levels. Perhaps coordination, goal setting, monitoring, and ethical functions? I don't say this lightly as I was the founding Director of Biomedical Technology Transfer at the University of Michigan (during the race for mapping the Human Genome Project) and have been an adjunct professor at various institutions for many years as well as the CEO of various AI, machine intelligence and robotics companies over the years (including one that may have found a path to AGI).
Well that's just upped the ante for universities - thanks Geoffrey 🙂 — this is a really important consideration though, and one that universities need to be taking very seriously indeed (including my own!)
Excellent analysis. I especially appreciate your citation of Vannevar Bush and generating quadrant options.
I do wonder about internal university objections to Genesis. Some faculty and staff will reject it outright either because of their opposition to Trump or their stance towards AI.
Yes - interesting to see how this plays out, although I suspect researchers in the natural sciences are more likely to be excited about embracing AI-accelerated research
Great article Andrew - very interesting views!
For those interested in the topic, in my latest piece, The Genesis Mission, I supplement this view by examining why the U.S. has revived the institutional architecture of the Manhattan and Apollo programs, and how this will reshape scientific discovery, the global balance of power, the AI race with China, and Europe’s eroding competitiveness.
This is the new map of power. And it’s being drawn right now.
https://alphawavess.substack.com/p/the-genesis-mission?r=2gkbpg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
If we look at advances in most areas of artificial intelligence, the national labs have been almost entirely absent. Confined by narrow definitions of "mission", their focus has been on translating advances from universities and industries into adoption by the armed forces and the intelligence community.
Transforming them into risk-taking hubs of basic research and rapid innovation will require less rather than more mission focus. It will require empowering individual scientists to pursue the directions they believe will be most important. It will require reducing the barriers to the movement of people from industry into/out of the labs.
It may also require hiring different kinds of researchers who are willing to operate outside their comfort zones. Personnel is policy.
One reason universities are able to respond rapidly to new challenges is that every year an entire new cohort of students arrives (and another leaves). Another strength of research universities is that professors, in their teaching role, revisit the fundamentals every year. In so doing, they uncover the cracks and gaps that suggest fundamentally new research directions. Neither the national labs nor the tech companies are forced to think about these questions.
Yes and also universities champion intellectual freedom. How much do you think the research agendas will be set according to political priorities?
Ha - of course research conducted by federal labs is much less concerned with intellectual/academic freedom than it is achieving goals - and this is one of the challenges with serendipitous discovery. This is where I'd like to think there's a win-win through working with universities.
While I have the greatest respect for Arizona State University and you personally, it is fairly clear to me that our entire research university system is going to be fundamentally transformed or even eliminated as AI evolves to possible AGI and ASI. What I see is the private sector and national labs taking over their teaching and research roles - using many AI Agents to do what was previously done by professors, fellows and graduate students. The current administration would, I suspect, like nothing better and is likely to encourage that change. It's hard to imagine a function for human educators and researchers if AI agents are functioning at brilliant teacher and researcher levels. Perhaps coordination, goal setting, monitoring, and ethical functions? I don't say this lightly as I was the founding Director of Biomedical Technology Transfer at the University of Michigan (during the race for mapping the Human Genome Project) and have been an adjunct professor at various institutions for many years as well as the CEO of various AI, machine intelligence and robotics companies over the years (including one that may have found a path to AGI).
Well that's just upped the ante for universities - thanks Geoffrey 🙂 — this is a really important consideration though, and one that universities need to be taking very seriously indeed (including my own!)
Excellent analysis. I especially appreciate your citation of Vannevar Bush and generating quadrant options.
I do wonder about internal university objections to Genesis. Some faculty and staff will reject it outright either because of their opposition to Trump or their stance towards AI.
Yes - interesting to see how this plays out, although I suspect researchers in the natural sciences are more likely to be excited about embracing AI-accelerated research
True, opposition to AI skews towards the humanities and arts so far.