US President Biden delivers a speech at the State Department in Washington, DC, on January 13, 2025.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
U.S. President Biden issued an executive order on Thursday aimed at accelerating the construction of domestic artificial intelligence infrastructure and preventing the national security risks involved in this technology.
The move enables the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy to lease federal sites for gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence data centers.
“Artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on our economy, including in areas such as health care, transportation, education, and more, and it is too important to be outsourced,” the White House said in a report. release.
The order also issued guidelines for AI developers to use the sites to not only build, operate and maintain rental centers at full capacity, but also to provide clean energy to meet their capacity needs to prevent increases in power costs.
Companies that lease federal lands will also be required to purchase an “appropriate share” of U.S.-made semiconductors and pay workers “prevailing wages,” the release said. Once the agency selects a site, the developer can submit a leasing proposal.
Global electricity consumption in data centers, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency is expected to double between 2022 and 2026, according to a study Report From the International Energy Agency.
AI models, especially large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, rely on data centers to train on large amounts of data and produce more complex, more human-like answers based on user prompts. To cool power-intensive structures, AI developers have to increase water usage, which critics say is harmful to the environment and unsustainable in the long term.
Technology companies have responded by exploring other forms of electricity to maintain their data centers. In recent months, Google, Microsoft and Amazon each announced nuclear power deals, with Microsoft and constellation Get the Three Mile Island reactor back online.
Additional reporting by CNBC’s Ryan Browne.
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