LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence Tuesday that aims to ensure the infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations, such as vast data centers and fresh neat energy facilities, can be built quickly and efficiently scale in the United States.
The executive order directs federal agencies to accelerate the development of large-scale AI infrastructure at government sites while imposing requirements and safeguards on developers building at those sites. It also directs certain agencies to make federal sites available for AI data centers and fresh neat energy facilities. These authorities will assist facilitate the connection of infrastructure to the electricity grid and speed up the approval process.
While the tech industry has long relied on data centers to power online services, from email and social media to financial transactions, the fresh AI technology behind popular chatbots and other generative AI tools requires even more powerful calculations to build and operation.
A report released last month by the Department of Energy estimated that power demand for data centers in the U.S. has tripled over the past decade and is expected to double or triple again by 2028, when it could consume up to 12% of the country’s electricity.
In a statement, Biden said AI “will have profound impacts on national security and enormous potential to improve the lives of Americans if used responsibly, from helping cure diseases to keeping communities safe.” by mitigating the effects of climate change.”
“But we cannot take our leadership for granted,” the Democratic president said. “We will not allow America to become obsolete when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice important environmental standards and our collective efforts to protect clean air and water.”
Under the fresh rules, the departments of Defense and Energy will each identify at least three sites where the private sector can build AI data centers. Authorities will conduct “competitive bidding” from private companies to build AI data centers on these federal sites, senior administration officials said.
Developers building on these sites must, among other things, pay for the construction of these facilities and ensure sufficient neat electricity generation to meet the full capacity needs of their data centers. Although the U.S. government leases land to a company, that company would own the materials manufactured there, officials said.
With less than a week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the big question is whether the fresh administration will keep the fresh order in place or repeal it. A major focus of the order is reducing bottlenecks in connecting energy-hungry data centers to fresh sources of power, including renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
“It has to be a priority because otherwise there will be power outages and citizens or businesses will be affected,” said computer scientist Sasha Luccioni, climate director at AI company Hugging Face. “Making it easier to connect infrastructure to the grid is a no-brainer that would be useful to the next government, whatever its sustainability or climate priorities.”
Biden said the effort is aimed at accelerating the transition to neat energy in a way that is “responsible and respectful of local communities” and does not impose additional costs on the average American. Developers selected to build on government sites must cover all costs of building and operating the AI infrastructure so that the development does not raise electricity prices for consumers, the administration said.
The orders also stipulate that the construction of AI data centers on federal sites should take place within the framework of public employment contracts. According to government officials, some of the locations are reserved for tiny and medium-sized AI companies.
Government agencies will also conduct a study on the impact of all AI data centers on electricity prices, and the Energy Department will provide technical assistance to state utility commissions in designing electricity tariffs that can support connecting fresh vast customers to neat energy.
Under the order, the Interior Department will identify properties it manages that are suitable for neat energy development and can support data centers on government sites, administration officials said.
“The amounts of computing power and electricity needed to train and operate frontier models are increasing rapidly and will continue to increase,” said Tarun Chhabra, deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for technology and national security. “We expect that by around 2028, leading AI developers will seek to operate data centers with capacity of up to five gigawatts for training AI models.”
Large-scale deployment of AI systems also requires a broader network of data centers in different parts of the country, he said.
“From a national security perspective, it’s really important to find a way to build the data centers and energy infrastructure to support AI border operations here in the United States,” he said, adding that building data centers in the U.S. “will prevent adversaries from accessing these powerful systems to the detriment of our military and national security.”
This type of investment will also prevent the U.S. from becoming more dependent on other countries for access to AI tools, Chhabra said.
The executive order follows the Biden administration’s proposed fresh restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence chips to more than 100 countries. That proposal sparked concerns among chip industry executives as well as European Union and Chinese officials and drew criticism from some Republicans and Trump allies.
In contrast, tech industry groups welcomed Biden’s data center order on Tuesday, while some liberal groups said it did not contain sufficient environmental protections.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who warned Biden last month against accelerating data center expansion, praised the order on Monday for recognizing the risks that unbridled data center growth poses to the power grid and the could represent climate.
“Tariff payers and future generations should not have to bear the costs of the insatiable energy demands of tech companies that are making huge amounts of money from the AI boom,” Whitehouse said, adding that he doubted the Trump administration would follow through.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to an emailed request for comment on the order.
Missing from the regulation is the question of how the water consumption of AI data centers should be managed. “In states with multiple data centers, there is growing concern about how to balance the economic development they bring with their impact on water resources as they use large amounts of water for cooling,” said J. Alan Roberson , executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Managers.
“Across the country, everyone is trying to get a better idea of the impact data centers have on water use now and in the future,” he said.
The executive order could have directed federal agencies to collect information about how much water data centers operate to assist state and local officials make zoning decisions about whether to allow them, but that was not the case, he added.
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AP writers Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
