First Lady Melania Trump and multiple cabinet leaders on Thursday unveiled the next steps in the White House’s Presidential AI Challenge — a program mandated in an April executive order and launched Aug. 26 — and how the Trump administration is planning to keep the U.S. at the forefront of AI innovation and education.

The remarks were made at the second White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education meeting and were accompanied by pledges from government agencies and the private sector to advance AI education, as mandated by the order.

“We are here today to talk about our future in the most real sense imaginable: how America’s children can be prepared to build our country tomorrow with the cutting edge tools of today,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said during the meeting. “We are proud and grateful to announce new steps in fulfilling the mission of this task force and the president’s vision for this AI challenge.”

Those upcoming steps include the release of toolkits, webinars, classroom guides and more, as well as agency action items intended to help cultivate a strong American foundation in AI education within academia and the workforce. These include sector-specific, applied AI training materials and ways to incorporate AI in American classrooms.

“Our goal is to empower states and schools to begin exploring AI integration in a way that works best for their communities,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said during the meeting. “Ed is fully aligned with the Presidential AI Challenge, and is encouraging students and educators to explore AI technologies with curiosity and with creativity. It’s not one of those things to be afraid of. Let’s embrace it.”

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins spotlighted the expansive partnerships between the agency and external entities to bring AI systems into agrarian workflows.

“Far too often for those living and working in our rural parts of our country, that often those are left behind and do not always have the same access to the most recent technological innovations that our urban counterparts across the country do,” Rollins said. “We cannot let that happen with AI.”

USDA will focus on bringing AI systems into agricultural workflows and education, particularly for predictive analyses based on existing agriculture knowledge and data. Sensor systems, robotics and automation are all areas that are slated to modernize the agricultural industry, with help from private sector partners like Microsoft and academia, including Iowa State University and Texas State University. 

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said her agency is expanding AI access and literacy through several vehicles — notably via apprenticeship opportunities, part of Labor and Commerce’s joint Talent Strategy that was released earlier in August. 

“On-the-job training programs will help fill the mortgage paying jobs that AI will create, while also enhancing the unique skills required to succeed in various industries,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “Expanding these opportunities is a key component of our strategy to reach the president’s goal of 1 million new, active apprentices across the United States.”

Chavez-DeRemer also previewed pending partnerships to help disseminate AI education and training materials across the country, along with future best practices for effective AI literacy training. 

Several private sector companies were also in attendance to explain their commitments towards supporting the initiative, noting that developing and expanding AI education is necessary to keep up with the demands of the growing AI-centric labor market. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced their companies’ individual billion- and million-dollar commitments, respectively, to bolster AI education within academia and the existing workforce.

“This is all in the service of helping the next generation to solve problems, fuel innovation and build an incredible future,” Pichai said. “These are all goals we all share. We are incredibly thankful for the partnership and the leadership from the first lady, the president and the administration, and for showing us the way.”

The updates to the Presidential AI Challenge reflect the Trump administration’s no-holds-barred approach to both incorporating AI and machine learning into the government and ensuring the U.S. will lead in new AI technologies at the global level.

PENSACOLA, Fla. — The University of West Florida was just awarded a major grant to help innovate cutting-edge technology in Artificial Intelligence.

The US Air Force Research Laboratory awarded $100,000 to UWF’s Intelligent Systems and Robotics doctorate program.

The grant supports research in Artificial Intelligence and robotics while training PhD students.

The funding was awarded to explore how these systems can support military operations, but also be applied to issues we could face here locally like DISA.

Unlike generative AI in apps like ChatGPT, this research focuses on “reinforcement learning.”

“It’s action-driven. It’s designed to produce strategies versus content and text or visual content,” said Dr. Kristen “Brent” Venable with UWF.

Dr. Venable is leading the research.

Her team is designing simulations that teach autonomous systems like robots and drones how to adapt to the environment around them without human help — enabling the drones to make a decision on their own.

“So if we deployed them and let them go autonomously, sometimes far away, they should be able to decide whether to communicate, whether to go in a certain direction,” she said.

The initial goal of the grant is to help the US military leverage machine learning.

But Dr. Venable says the technology has potential to help systems like local emergency management during a disaster.

“You can see how this could be applied for disaster response,” she said. “Think about having some drones that have to fly over a zone and find people to be rescued or assets that need to be restored.”

Dr. Venable says UWF is poised to deliver on their promises to innovate the technology.

The doctorate program was created with Pensacola’s Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, giving students access to world-class AI and robotics research.

Over the last five years, the program has expanded to more than 30 students.

“We are very well positioned because the way we are, in some sense, lean and mean is attractive to funding agencies,” Dr. Venable said. “Because we can deliver results while training the next generation.”

The local investment by the Air Force comes as artificial intelligence takes center stage nationally.

On Thursday, First Lady Melania Trump announced a presidential AI challenge for students and educators.

President Trump has also signed an executive order to expand AI education.

Dr. Venable says she’s confident the administration’s push for research will benefit the university’s efforts, as the one-year grant will only go so far.

“I think the administration is correctly identifying as a key factor in having the US lead on the research,” she said. “It’s a good seedling to start the conversation for one year.”

The research conducted at UWF and the IHMC are helping put the area on the map as an intelligence hub.

Dr. Venable says they’re actively discussing how to apply for more grants to help with this ongoing research.

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