Wherever the artificial intelligence revolution ends up, the journey won’t be dull. In recent months, blockbuster deals, technical triumphs, competitive hostilities and increasingly fraught geopolitics have all roiled the industry. As this race accelerates, it’s tempting to say that AI companies should be left alone to prosper. But public policy still has a role to play, both to maximize the technology’s benefits — social, economic, scientific — and to head off potential risks. In that light, a recent report from the White House, called the AI Action Plan, is a good start. An immediate challenge for the industry is energy. As AI’s demand for power soars, the share of electricity consumed by data centers globally is expected to almost double, from 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 to 945 TWh by 2030. Among other things, the new plan aims to streamline permitting and environmental reviews for AI infrastructure, upgrade the electric grid, and “embrace new energy generation sources at the technological frontier.” Details pending, but these are sensible objectives. The White House also hopes to encourage innovation and limit red tape. The plan embraces open-source and open-weight models (useful for startups and researchers), prioritizes R&D spending, and discourages burdensome state-level AI laws (of which hundreds have recently been introduced). It creates “regulatory sandboxes” where companies and researchers can experiment in a controlled setting, and aims to expand access to large-scale computing power, especially for smaller companies. Again: steps in the right direction.

Full opinion : The White House has produced an ambitious proposal for winning the global artificial intelligence race.