Executive order on advancing United States leadership in AI infrastructure

Summary of the concrete actions:

1. Early 2025: Identify Federal sites for AI data centers, clean energy facilities, and geothermal zones. Streamline permitting processes and draft reporting requirements for AI infrastructure. Develop a plan for global collaboration on trusted AI infrastructure.

2. By Mid-2025: Issue solicitations for AI infrastructure projects on Federal sites. Select winning proposals and announce plans for site preparation. Plan grid upgrades and set energy efficiency targets for AI data centers.

3. By Late 2025: Finalize all permits and complete environmental reviews. Begin construction of AI infrastructure and prioritize grid enhancements.

4. By 2027: Ensure AI data centers are operational, utilizing clean energy to meet power demands.

5. Ongoing: Advance research on energy efficiency and supply chain resilience. Report on AI infrastructure impacts and collaborate internationally on clean energy and trusted AI development.

It's interesting to see the federal government taking a strong industrial policy approach to AI through this executive order as well as physical computing via the CHIPS act.

Couple concerns:

- I loath to believe in silver bullets. The executive branch seems to believe that investing in AI (note: the order, despite the extensive definitions, leaves Artificial Intelligence undefined) is the solution to US global leadership, clean energy, national defense and better jobs. Rarely if ever is one policy a panacea for so many objectives.

- I am skeptical of government "picking the winners". Markets do best when competitive forces reward innovation. By enforcing an industrial policy on a nascent industry, the executive may just as well be stifling innovation from unlikely firms.

- I am always worried about inducing a _subsidy race_ whereby countries race to subsidize firms to gain a competitive advantage. Other countries do the same, leading to a glut of stimulus with little advantage to any country.

- Finally, government bureaucracy moves slowly (some say that's the point). What happens if a breakthrough innovation in AI radically changes our needs for the type, size or other characteristic of these data centers? Worse still, what happens if we hit another AI winter? Are we left with an enormous pork barrel project? It's hard to envision the federal government industrial policy perfectly capturing future market needs, especially in such a fast moving industry as tech.

I wonder if open models are even going to be allowed.

> require adherence to technical standards and guidelines for cyber, supply-chain, and physical security for protecting and controlling any facilities, equipment, devices, systems, data, and other property, including AI model weights

> plans for commercializing or otherwise deploying or advancing deployment of appropriate intellectual property, including AI model weights

Great, give away more BLM land to Unaccountable corps to pollute who are going to use it to run facial recognition, surveillance, and randomly delete accounts. Fantastic. What a beautifully anti-human future we have in store.

Can someone explain the purpose of releasing this right before their administration is ending? Or am I misunderstanding something

Are they just going to train LLM's themselves... LLM's are the hot topic today, but... Waiting for new architecture to drop.

I'm struggling to describe the levels of skepticism that I'm feeling right now.

It can't be a coincidence this comes a day after the UK published an 'AI action plan' https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-opportunities-...

Thanks from India! The last time US imposed sanctions on Cryogenic rocket engines, India developed its own indigenous engine. This is the forcing factor other countries need to decouple from US leadership which it just proved cannot be trusted.

The analysis of this EO in these comments is disappointing.

It contains a lot of good stuff, also on geothermal and nuclear; long term storage; improving power transmission infrastructure; attempting to address the impact of AI on electricity rates for regular consumers; improving data transparency and communications of interconnections; improving the permitting flow for critical (clean) infrastructure; and a bunch of other stuff.

The likelihood of it all surviving the incoming administration seem low, but given how it aligns with already present structural trends (and downright critically important needs in terms of power infrastructure at least), there's a good chance some parts will.

It's more an energy policy EO than an AI EO, and it's both ambitious and objectively positive for combating climate change. Maybe we could at least read the damn thing before filling the comments with low effort cynicism?

Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!

Picking a target makes that target already obsolete. I wonder if this is the beginning of the pop of the ai bubble

Didn’t they release something just yesterday that was doing the opposite?

what is the meaning of doing this in the last week of the biden presidency? just trying to frontrun trump saying the same thing?

I have some unease about this. If it wasn't for recent advancements and hype around LLMs we'd probably get something rushed through but not with AI but crypto. The grifters will grift..

Yeah, let's funnel tax dollars to AI, so companies can fire office workers.

Why is it that the Biden admin is doing two years worth of governing in the last two weeks of their tenure?

The Biden administration finally woke up and realized America should lead in AI. But instead of unleashing the free market, we’re getting a laundry list of regulations, mandates, and red tape. Buckle up for the Big Government AI Plan