We recently had the honor of briefing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on the role of The Common Crawl Foundation as critical infrastructure in the artificial intelligence ecosystem and how we can support U.S. federal efforts in advancing responsible AI use and research.

We were invited by Travis Hoppe, Assistant Director for AI Research and Development for the OSTP, who hosted the meeting.  Rich Skrenta, Executive Director of the Common Crawl Foundation led the briefing, accompanied by Hugh Marbury and Chris Tolles from our advisory board.  Other attendees both in person and online included representatives from the OSTP, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Before the briefing, we attended a roundtable discussion titled "Democratizing Government Data with Gen AI" organized by the Kapor Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE).  There, we connected with featured presenter Oliver Wise, the Chief Data Officer at the U.S. Department of Commerce, who facilitated the chain of introductions leading to our briefing.  

Presenting our work and mission to leaders dedicated to public service at the historic Old Executive Office Building was a significant opportunity, and the follow-up from this briefing has been highly productive and encouraging.  As discussions turned to the role that Common Crawl can play as a responsible actor in the open data space, we were a signatory to an announcement from the White House on September 12, 2024, regarding voluntary private sector commitments to responsibly source their datasets and safeguard them from image-based sexual abuse.

Additionally, we have had follow-up meetings graciously facilitated by the OSTP with other interested parties inside and outside the federal government.  We were especially excited to meet with executive management leading the National Science Foundation’s National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot project to discuss the vision for a shared national research infrastructure for responsible discovery and innovation in AI.

We are looking forward to more involvement with various agencies within the federal government to explore how the Common Crawl Foundation can help promote artificial intelligence for the benefit of our nation and the world.  We would like to thank Travis Hoppe for kicking-off these exciting collaborations.