US struggles to reconcile AI ambitions with green concernsUS struggles to reconcile AI ambitions with green concerns

The EO is in keeping with Biden’s assertive start to the year, with the entrenchment of America’s global pre-eminence in AI the clear focus. Hence its called the ‘Executive Order on Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure’. Once more it’s a lengthy document, which somewhat labours the point about what a big deal AI is.

It opens by detailing the purpose of the EO, listing the usual litany of military and economic needs that will be catastrophically neglected if the measures contained aren’t undertaken immediately. While not explicitly identified, the Chinese bugbear yet again serves as the elephant in the room to crush dissent when it comes to increasing the power and reach of the US state even further, via regular references to ‘competitors’.

“With this order, I provide a plan for protecting national security, preserving our economic competitiveness, revitalizing our energy infrastructure, and ensuring United States leadership in AI,” concludes the first section, before moving on to detail the new policy, which is informed by five guiding principles as follows.

So it seems like Biden is trying to balance opposing interests by saying he wants to massively expand energy-hungry AI infrastructure, but do so in a nice, green, inoffensive way. The first bit will be partly addressed by leasing federal land to datacenter infrastructure developers, with the second bid covered by making that conditional on adherence to guiding principles 3-5.

The voracious power needs of AI-focused data centers have fundamentally altered the dynamics of the datacentre business, meaning access to energy and cooling now takes priority over proximity to major conurbations. This phenomenon was thoroughly explored in two of our most recent podcasts and it’s such a big factor that hyperscalers are even looking into building their own nuclear power stations.

This, in turn, opens up new communications challenges around connecting those often remote data centers to end users. “Edge computing and an increasing number of geographically distributed and interconnected data centers will be needed to do justice to AI’s potential and revolutionize the economy,” said DE-CIX CEO Ivo Ivanov in email comments. “America’s move to develop this ecosystem in a way that is energy-conscious and sustainable will be an important milestone on the road to achieving next-generation, AI-ready connectivity.”

All of this increased energy use is, of course, incompatible with ‘net zero’ and other lofty green ambitions. China, it seems, is not hamstrung by such concerns so the west has some tough decisions to make. A few US Senators recently wrote a letter to Biden, lamenting the energy profile of AI, but something’s got to give and when push comes to shove the US will likely prioritise the AI arms race over such concerns.

Here’s some good further analysis from an AI policy expert.