I would expect that a qualified, well-regarded leader is necessary, but I’m not confident it is sufficient. Other factors might dominate, such as: budget, sustained attention from higher-level political leaders, quality and quantity of supporting staff, project scoping, and exogenous factors (e.g. AI progress moving in a way that shifts how NIST wants to address the issue).
What are the most reliable signals for NIST producing useful work, particularly in a relatively new field? What does history show us? What kind of patterns do we find when NIST engages with: (a) academia; (b) industry; (c) the executive branch?
This strongly updates me towards expecting the institute to produce useful work.
I’m not so sure.
I would expect that a qualified, well-regarded leader is necessary, but I’m not confident it is sufficient. Other factors might dominate, such as: budget, sustained attention from higher-level political leaders, quality and quantity of supporting staff, project scoping, and exogenous factors (e.g. AI progress moving in a way that shifts how NIST wants to address the issue).
What are the most reliable signals for NIST producing useful work, particularly in a relatively new field? What does history show us? What kind of patterns do we find when NIST engages with: (a) academia; (b) industry; (c) the executive branch?