Conference: SAIL 2024: Summit for AI Institutes Leadership and Federated Activities; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; 6-9 October 2024

This conference is the third annual program-wide meeting in the National AI Research Institutes Program. The Summit for AI Institutes Leadership (SAIL 2024) is an NSF-sponsored conference organized and executed by the program’s hub activity, the AI Institutes Virtual Organization (AIVO). The conference gathers the leaders and other key personnel from all AI Institutes to foster community building of those Institutes and other related activities into a network of collaborating organizations conducting knowledge exchange, growing their own competencies, and engaging with the broader public. The conference will take place 6-9 October 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This conference aims to maximize the value of the AI Institutes as a flagship national AI investment. The conference delivers on the intent of NSF and its funding partners to continue to nurture the AI Institutes into a fully cohered national program, resulting in synergy across the constituent institutes that is greater than the sum of its parts. This gathering builds upon the successes and lessons from the previous SAIL events (2022 and 2023) and continues a successful record of establishing SAIL as the flagship event for the National AI Research Institutes program.

The conference program addresses the needs of AI Institutes in various stages of their lifecycle, from those in their fourth year to newly-established AI Institutes. This greatly enhances knowledge transfer among all. The program includes knowledge exchange about education and outreach, project management, computing and research infrastructure, communications, workforce development, and ethics.

The conference is comprised of a balance of community-moderated panels with plenary sessions and other program-wide community building. A workshop day prior to the main conference allows the program’s special interest groups to hold smaller community workshops around topics of interest withing a specialized area, and across institute boundaries. Following the SAIL conference events, an AI Institutes Expo Day co-located in Pittsburgh will build upon this gathering to create a program-organized public engagement event.

Expo day will combine Institute exhibits, talks, panels, and networking venues to allow the public to directly and efficiently engage with the AI Institutes toward greater understanding of AI and the potential initiation of new collaborations.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.