OpenAI, Nvidia Executives Discuss AI Infrastructure Needs With Biden Officials

tech.hindustantimes.com:

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang met with senior Biden administration officials and other industry leaders at the White House, where they discussed steps to address massive infrastructure needs for artificial intelligence projects.

On the tech side, attendees also included Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google President Ruth Porat, Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud chief Matt Garman and Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith, according to a White House statement on Thursday's meeting. Government officials included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

Following the talks, the White House announced an interagency task force to help promote data center development in the US and initiatives to support accelerated permitting for those facilities. The steps are aimed at ensuring that the US retains its leadership in the field of AI, where rapid advances by industry require significant investments in data centers and energy supply. 

The Energy Department will also steer data center owners and operators toward resources such as loans, grants and tax credits that can help them find clean and reliable power sources, according to the White House statement. Attendees from the energy industry included Exeleon CEO Calvin Butler.

OpenAI, for example, plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on a domestic AI infrastructure push that spans data centers, energy capacity and transmission and semiconductor manufacturing — with investment from around the globe. Company executives have been meeting with government officials for months about a range of issues related to the initiative, including national security concerns that could be associated with foreign capital.

The discussions took place the same day that OpenAI announced a new artificial intelligence model known internally as “Strawberry” that can perform some human-like reasoning tasks, a step that signaled the intensity of the