President Trump on Monday signed an executive order to bolster national scientific research through the use of artificial intelligence.
The order directs the Department of Energy’s national laboratories to create an A.I. platform that will fuse troves of federal data on health, energy and manufacturing, in partnership with A.I. companies.
The technology is to be used to automate experiments, design research simulations and generate predictive models for “everything from protein folding to fusion plasma dynamics,” Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters on Monday in a briefing before the executive order was publicly announced.
The government’s plan is to first use existing supercomputers within the country’s 17 national labs, and then eventually build more computing infrastructure. The White House did not say how the costs of additional technology would be funded.
The chipmakers Nvidia and AMD and the computer giants Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell have already agreed to build facilities within the national labs, a White House official, who spoke about details of the program on the condition of anonymity, told reporters in the briefing. Some data will be shared with A.I. companies, but the White House official said that the government would withhold sensitive information that could put national security at risk.
“This will shorten discovery timelines from years to days or even hours, empowering scientists to test bolder hypotheses and discover breakthroughs currently unreachable,” Mr. Kratsios added.
It was Mr. Trump’s latest executive order on A.I. From his first days in office, Mr. Trump has issued orders to knock down regulatory obstacles and fast-track permitting and exports of A.I. He has championed Silicon Valley’s A.I. industry, warning that regulations could impede the nation’s battle against China for economic and tech leadership.
Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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