National Science Foundation Launches Open Knowledge Network to Enhance AI and Data Interoperability
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has officially launched the NSF Open Knowledge Network (OKN), a national open-data infrastructure. This network connects 43 knowledge graphs and billions of facts across diverse sectors including health, environment, justice, manufacturing, and national security. The OKN, accessible to the public at okn.us, was developed through the NSF Prototype Open Knowledge Network program in collaboration with numerous federal partners. It aims to provide a structured, persistent, and verifiable knowledge layer to support contemporary artificial intelligence models by offering grounded facts, attribution, and knowledge governance. The initiative addresses the challenge of siloed datasets that are often inaccessible, interoperable, or machine-readable for AI systems, making federal and public data findable and connected on a national scale. The project began in 2023 with an initial investment of $26.7 million and involved 18 research teams, with core support from agencies like...
