President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday aimed at reducing barriers to building new data centers and associated energy infrastructure needed to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The executive order directs the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to select federal land that can be leased to companies to build “gigawatt-scale” data centers, while leveraging the Department of the Interior to build clean energy infrastructure. It mandates the identification of available land for this purpose. New data center.
The administration also aims to prioritize “full and expedited” permitting of these sites and help facilitate the development of power lines and interconnections to the power grid.
“Right now, the AI infrastructure market is very constrained,” Navtey Dhillon, deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the White House Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday.
“These investments are not only capital intensive, but power constraints and power supply challenges result in long lead times to bring data centers to market,” he added.
To lease these sites, companies must pay the costs of building, operating and maintaining the data center, as well as securing clean electricity to meet their energy needs. It will also need to work with governments to assess the national security risks of AI models it develops and buy an “appropriate” share of U.S. semiconductors.
“The United States is leading the world on the frontier of artificial intelligence (AI),” Biden said in a statement.
“But we can't take our lead for granted,” he added. “We cannot afford to lose to the United States on the technologies that will define our future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”
The executive order follows the Biden administration's announcement on Monday of a new framework regulating the “proliferation” of U.S.-made AI, especially advanced AI chips.
The “proliferation” rule, which was immediately condemned by the semiconductor and chip industry, imposes new restrictions on chip sales to most countries in the world, except for some U.S. allies.
“The president's executive order on AI infrastructure really represents the other side of that effort,” Tarun Chhabra, deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for technology and national security, said by phone Monday.
“As we take steps to ensure the responsible dissemination of AI technology abroad, we want to help the AI industry build the infrastructure to train and use powerful AI models here in the United States. “It's very important that we do that,” he added.
