Trump’s new executive order brings together Big Tech, academics and the government on AI research
By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN
(CNN) — The White House on Monday launched a new program to allow the Department of Energy’s national laboratories to collaborate with tech companies and academics on using AI to further scientific research.
Under the new Genesis Mission, created by executive order, the Department of Energy will develop a new AI platform that uses federal scientific data to train AI models and agents made for scientific research. It underscores President Donald Trump’s focus on AI in his second term, coming after he’s introduced a sweeping package of initiatives and policy recommendations in July called the AI Action Plan.
The Genesis Mission aims to take the tech and business industries’ progress in AI and apply it to scientific research in health, energy, manufacturing and other fields, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on a call with reporters on Monday. He also said the program would lower energy prices for consumers, a key challenge as investment in AI have increased this year.
The DoE’s laboratories have been conducting research in everything from energy to health, applied materials and quantum science for decades. But a new platform under the initiative will let DoE labs, private companies and academic institutions share information more easily. That, in turn, will help researchers apply AI to areas like physics and chemistry.
“The private sector has launched artificial intelligence at huge scale, but with a little bit different focus, on language, on business, on processes, on consumer services.” Wright said. “What we’re doing here is just pivoting those efforts to focus on scientific discovery, engineering advancements.”
The Genesis Mission
A key part of accomplishing that goal, according to Wright, is opening up access to data sets from the DoE’s national labs, which include facilities such as the Ames National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory among many others.
The platform will allow “multiple Federal research agencies” and “the private sector” to collaborate in order to “win and stay ahead in the AI race,”according to a White House fact sheet.
Key focus areas for the program include biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion energy, space exploration, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics.
Tech giants have already been working more closely with the DoE; Nvidia and Oracle announced a partnership in October to build supercomputers for Argonne National Laboratory. PC maker Dell is also developing a supercomputer for use at Berkeley Lab, according to a May announcement. The Genesis Mission is designed to facilitate more of those types of deals.
Tech companies and academics have also been researching the use of AI in health for years; Google introduced a family of AI models fine-tuned for the healthcare industry in 2023.
But the push to use AI in scientific research also comes as the technology still grapples with hallucinations, or a tendency for the tech to make things up.
The directive also strikes at a critical issue brought up by the AI boom: the toll it could take on energy grids. Residential electricity costs are on the rise, with the average price of electricity in America increasing 13% since 2022. Data centers, which are critical for powering AI services and training AI models, are expected to consume approximately 6.7% to 12% of US electricity in 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023, according to a report from the Department of Energy.
Wright said the program would “make our electricity grid more efficient and reverse price rises that have infuriated American citizens.”
But doing so won’t be an easy task; power grids are already in need of updating and maintenance, especially in the face of severe weather events. And the rate at which AI is advancing could make it increasingly difficult for the energy industry to keep up as tech giants pour billions into new data centers.
Trump’s AI push
The executive order is just the latest Trump initiative to accelerate US AI development. Just last week, Trump spoke at the Saudi-US investment forum in Washington, where a flurry of partnerships were announced between American tech companies and Humain AI, a tech company backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
The White House has also introduced unconventional arrangements that involve government dealings with private businesses as part of Trump’s push for American AI dominance. The US government took a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel in August and struck a deal with AMD and Nvidia to take a 15% cut of chip sales to China in exchange for export licenses.
At the heart of Trump’s AI blitz is a desire to stay ahead of China in the AI race as trade tensions bubble between the two economic powerhouses. Chinese tech startup DeepSeek rattled US markets in January with the arrival of its R1 model, sparking fear that China may be further ahead in AI than previously expected.
Trump and some tech giants like OpenAI have argued that state-level regulation could slow innovation. Trump recently drafted a separate executive order aimed at preventing such regulation, after Congress shot down a previous effort to block state-level AI regulations.
But easing regulation has raised safety concerns from lawmakers and online safety advocates after a series of reports this year indicated AI could contribute to self-harm and mental distress.
The-CNN-Wire
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