The President signed an Executive Order (EO) on November 24 to accelerate the application of AI across government and industry. The Secretary of Energy will be the focal point for this initiative. It will leverage our National Laboratories in concert with America’s brightest minds, extensive computer systems, and scientific data to create a single, coordinated research system.
This program will focus on significant scientific challenges that can dramatically improve our Nation’s national, economic, and health security, including biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion energy, space exploration, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics.
The Executive Order states, “The challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.”
THE STRUCTURE
DOE’s National Laboratories will lead this effort. According to the Fact Sheet published by OPM, “AI needs large amounts of organized and high-quality data and significant computing power.” These datasets and computing technology already exist within the DOE.
The Genesis Mission will be a dedicated, coordinated national network that will unleash a new era of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery to solve the most challenging problems of this century. The intent is for America to be at the forefront of these developments and to become the worldwide leader in advanced automation, as we have in the past.
It will be far-reaching, including government research facilities, brilliant scientists from all sectors, American businesses, universities, and existing research infrastructure.
A PATH FORWARD
To get to this point, the following Executive Orders and action plans were implemented earlier this year:
- An EO was signed last January, reversing policies that negatively impacted AI development.
- In April, an Executive Order was issued to advance AI education for America’s youth.
- Several Executive Orders were issued in July implementing an AI Action Plan, a policy agenda identifying nearly a hundred Federal actions to accelerate American AI innovation.
- In September, an Executive Order was issued on harnessing AI innovation to unlock cures for pediatric cancer, using the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative, which President Trump initially established in 2019 to collect, generate, and analyze childhood cancer data.
PRIORITIES
If America doesn’t take the lead, China or one of our other adversaries will. We will be caught in the same situation we now find ourselves in with manufacturing and our pharmaceuticals, which, for the most part, are being made overseas. We must become more self-reliant, or we will surely suffer the consequences.
AI and quantum computing are the new frontiers, and if we don’t take the lead, our national and economic security is at risk. The EO states that, “AI technologies can generate models of protein structures and novel materials, design and analyze experiments, and aggregate and generate new data faster and more effectively. Research that once took years could now take weeks or months.”
Some suggest quantum computing will make the impossible possible in short order. Arzak Khan, a distinguished leader in internet governance and cybersecurity states, “The country that dominates emerging fields of artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductor designs, and quantum computing will have global dominance.”
CONCERNS
AI and quantum computing require substantial energy to power data centers and research facilities. This has been an ongoing problem for some time, as evidenced by the high electricity costs nationwide. Prior administrations from both parties phased out coal-fired plants and issued prohibitive regulations that stifled nuclear power plant developments.
Many countries fast-tracked new High Efficiency, Low-emission (HELE) coal-fired plants that our nation’s coal exports are now fueling. Onerous EPA regulations deterred companies from building HELE plants in the United States.
We have a severe power shortage in America. At the same time, many coal-fired plants sit idle that could be brought back online or converted to natural gas to relieve our shortages until new HELE, nuclear plants, and other options are online.
ACCELERATING AI DEVELOPMENT
These actions will build on the worldwide computing revolution now underway and ensure that America takes the lead as we have in the past, based on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.
The potential to dramatically accelerate scientific discovery and further America’s technological and strategic global dominance is necessary. This is a new frontier, and one that we must win, and global strategic leadership is achievable.
Yet, we must be cautious and ensure that America’s energy infrastructure is expanded to meet all of our country’s energy needs as we progress along this path.
