LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an ambitious executive order on Tuesday. artificial intelligence Our goal is to help build the infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations, including large-scale data centers and new clean power facilities, quickly and at scale in the United States.
The executive order directs federal agencies to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure development at government facilities while imposing requirements and safeguards on developers building on those facilities. It also directs certain government agencies to make federal sites available. AI data center and a new clean power facility. These agencies facilitate the interconnection of infrastructure to the power grid and help expedite the permitting process.
The technology industry has long relied on data centers to run online services ranging from email and social media to financial transactions. new AI technology Behind popular chatbots and other generative AI tools, they require more powerful computation to build and operate.
A report released last month by the Department of Energy found that the power required for U.S. data centers has tripled in the past decade and is expected to double or triple again by 2028, accounting for up to 12 percent of the nation’s electricity. It is predicted that there is a possibility of consuming %.
Biden said in a statement that AI has “significant national security implications and, when harnessed responsibly, will help Americans do everything from treating disease to mitigating the effects of climate change to keeping communities safe.” “It offers great potential to improve lives.”
“But we cannot take our leadership for granted,” the Democratic president said. “We cannot afford to lose to America on the technologies that will define our future, and we must not sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”
Under the new rules, the Department of Defense and Department of Energy will each identify at least three locations where the private sector can build AI data centers. Government officials said the agencies will conduct a “competitive solicitation” for private companies to build AI data centers on federal property.
Developers building in these locations must, among other things, pay for the construction of these facilities and make adequate preparations. clean power generation Meet all your data center capacity needs. The U.S. government would lease the land to a company, but the company would own the materials it creates, officials said.
With less than a week left until President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, the big question is whether the next administration will maintain the new order or abolish it. Much of the focus of this order is to alleviate bottlenecks in connecting energy-intensive data centers to new power sources, including renewable energy such as wind and solar.
“It has to be a priority, because otherwise there will be power outages and people and businesses will be affected,” said Sasha Luccioni, a computer scientist and head of climate change at AI company Hugging Face. he said. “It goes without saying that making it easier to interconnect infrastructure and the grid will be helpful to the next administration, whatever their priorities are from a sustainability or climate perspective.”
Biden said the effort is aimed at accelerating the transition to clean energy in a way that is “responsible and respectful of communities” and doesn’t add costs to average Americans. The government said developers chosen to build on government sites will have to cover all costs of building and operating the AI infrastructure to ensure the development does not increase electricity bills for consumers.
The order also directs the construction of an AI data center on federal property under a public labor agreement. A portion of the site is set aside for small and medium-sized AI companies, government officials said.
The agency also plans to complete a study on the impact all AI data centers will have on electricity rates, and the Department of Energy will consult state public utility commissions on electricity rate designs that could support new large customers and clean energy connections. We plan to provide technical assistance.
As part of the order, the Interior Department will identify land under its control that is suitable for clean energy development and could support data centers on government property, officials said.
Tarun Chhabra, Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Technology and National Security, said, “The amount of computing power and electrical power required to train and operate Frontier models is rapidly increasing and will continue to increase rapidly.” said. “By around 2028, major AI developers will seek to operate data centers with up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training AI models.”
Deploying AI systems at scale also requires a broader network of data centers across different regions of the country, he said.
“From a national security perspective, it’s critically important that we find a path to building data centers and power infrastructure that will support state-of-the-art AI operations here in the United States,” he said. It added that this could prevent “attacks by adversaries.” Accessing these powerful systems would harm our military and national security. ”
This type of investment also prevents the United States from becoming dependent on other countries for access to AI tools, Chhabra said.
This executive order was issued shortly after the Biden administration. Proposed new limits Regarding the export of artificial intelligence chipan attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries. The proposal raised concerns among semiconductor industry executives and European Union officials about export restrictions that would affect 120 countries.
What is missing from this mandate is a way to manage water consumption in AI data centers. J. Alan Roberson, executive director of the State Beverage Association, said states with multiple data centers use large amounts of water for cooling, so it is difficult to balance the economic development that data centers bring with the impact on water resources. He said there are growing concerns about how to deal with the issue. Water supply manager.
“Everyone across the country is trying to better understand the impact that data centers have on current and future water use,” he said.
The executive order could direct federal agencies to collect information on how much water data centers use to help state and local officials make zoning decisions about whether to permit data centers. However, that had not been done, he added.
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Associated Press writers Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
