In what is being termed an ambitious move, President Biden has signed an executive order to help the infrastructure needed for AI operations to be built fast and at scale.
AI data centers are notoriously power hungry and so this is a bid to ensure that this demand can be met.
Tech giants have been working themselves to ensure power supplies for their own AI efforts, with both Google and Microsoft turning to nuclear power to service their needs.
What Has Biden Promised?
The key promise in Biden’s statement is access to land. Both the departments of Defense and Energy will be asked to put forward at least three sites each that could potentially be developed by private companies into AI data centers. The process will be competitive, Biden added.
The land will be leased to these companies but they will own whatever is created there, the statement explains. Some plots will be reserved for small and medium companies working in the AI sphere so that the larger companies don’t dominate.
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The construction costs will be borne by the private sector and they will need to have enough clean power generation on site to power whatever facilities they build.
However, the Government is promising help with “constructing, financing, facilitating, and planning the upgrade and development of transmission lines around those sites.”
What’s at Stake?
Biden insists that the move is necessary if the US is to maintain its lead in the AI space. He writes that “we cannot take our lead for granted. We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”
The outgoing president also talked about the benefits of AI for the nation and argued that these are huge reasons for expediency. AI will have “profound implications for national security and enormous potential to improve Americans’ lives if harnessed responsibly, from helping cure disease to keeping communities safe by mitigating the effects of climate change,” he wrote.
Unprecedented Energy Demands
A report published in July (PDF) by the Department of Energy detailed the demand. It explained: “Connection requests for hyperscale facilities of 3001000MW or larger with lead times of 1-3 years are stretching the capacity of local grids to deliver and supply power at that pace.”
It adds: “The scale of the potential growth of both the electricity and the information technology sectors due to AI is extraordinary and represents the leading edge of projected electricity demand growth.”
Another report from the department, quoted by AP News, suggests that the demand for electricity to power data centers has tripled in the past ten years and could do the same by as early as 2028.
Biden is pushing now for infrastructure to be built so that the power networks and data centers can keep up with the projected AI demand. This order is a bid to keep AI innovation pushing ahead and ensure that the US is not dependent on other countries to support this growth.