Trump to unveil 'Genesis Mission' to boost US AI efforts, says official

By Will Wade

 

President Donald Trump plans to roll out a “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order to boost US artificial intelligence efforts on Monday at the White House, according to a Department of Energy official. 

The effort is intended to signal that the Trump administration sees the coming AI race as important as the Manhattan Project or space race, Department of Energy Chief of Staff Carl Coe said Wednesday at the Opportunities in Energy Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.

 

“We see the Genesis Mission as equivalent,” Coe said.

 

Coe declined to provide additional detail, but said the order would likely direct national labs to do more work on emerging AI technologies and could involve public-private partnerships. A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that discussion about potential executive orders was speculation until officially announced.

 

The Trump administration is also preparing a separate executive order for the president’s signature that would allow the Department of Justice to sue states over artificial intelligence regulations it deems unconstitutional, and threaten funding cuts to states with AI laws considered too burdensome or restrictive.

 

The push comes after Trump this week greeted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for a series of meetings at the White House, with a focus on finalizing defense and economic deals. As part of those deals, Trump said he would approve the sale of advanced AI chips to the kingdom, while Nvidia Corp. and Elon Musk’s xAI announced plans to develop a data center with the Saudi-backed AI venture Humain.

 

At a Saudi investment conference on Wednesday, Trump said he would work with partners “to build the largest, most powerful, most innovative AI ecosystem in the world.”

 

“And we are going to work it so that you’ll have a one approval process to not have to go through 50 states,” Trump said, adding that a patchwork of state-level regulations would be “a disaster” because business could be derailed by “one woke state.”

 

On Tuesday, Trump called on lawmakers to pass a federal standard governing artificial intelligence either in an upcoming defence spending bill or as standalone legislation.

 

“If we don’t, then China will easily catch us in the AI race,” Trump said in a social media post.

 

Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang, who met with Trump on Tuesday and attended a dinner for the Saudi crown prince that evening, has made a similar argument publicly, saying that China’s streamlined regulation gives Beijing an advantage over the US in the global AI competition. 

 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, told Punchbowl News earlier this week that Republican leaders were “looking at” adding the language into the National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation, which sets the Pentagon’s budget and expenditures, often becomes a vehicle for other policy measures.

 

The Senate blocked an attempt to include the measure in a July budget bill, with opponents saying it could thwart attempts to implement child safety and copyright controls on the emerging technology.

 

Trump in July unveiled a sweeping AI policy blueprint designed to make it easier for AI companies to grow in the US, and easier for US allies to acquire crucial hardware and software. 

 

That blueprint encouraged the Department of Energy and other agencies to invest in “automated cloud-enabled labs for a range of scientific fields, including engineering, materials science, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience” in collaboration with the private sector and national laboratories. It also directed the administration to expand AI research and training at the labs.

 

Nvidia last month unveiled partnerships with the Energy Department to expand research into artificial intelligence and quantum computing that includes the development of new seven supercomputers that containing the company’s AI chips at federally run research facilities.