White House Creates AI Infrastructure Taskforce
Date Posted: September 19, 2024
Posted In: Discussion, Organizations,
From Construction Dive: The Biden administration convened leaders from artificial intelligence companies, hyperscalers, data center operators and utilities on Sept. 12 to strategize how to meet the country’s infrastructure needs for AI projects, per a White House news release.
AI requires abundant amounts of electricity, water and land for data centers as well as factories to make semiconductors — not to mention workers to build and staff it all. Attendees discussed strategies to meet clean energy, permitting and labor requirements for developing large-scale data centers and power infrastructure needed for advanced AI.
The Biden administration also announced a new interagency task force to coordinate federal policies to make sure they advance AI data center development in line with the White House’s economic, national security and environmental goals. It is also upping assistance to agencies that handle data center permitting.
Dive Insight:
The rise of AI has big implications for the building industry: The seemingly amorphous technology relies on enormous amounts of physical infrastructure and natural resources. The trend is driving demand for AI-ready data centers, even while many customers express wariness about AI.
The rapid growth of the energy-intensive tech has sparked concern about AI straining the country’s aging power grid. An average ChatGPT query uses nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search, and Goldman Sachs estimates that data center power demand will balloon 160% by 2030 to accommodate AI. At the same time, the carbon dioxide emissions of data centers may more than double between 2022 and 2030, per Goldman Sachs.
That surge in power demand could derail the Biden administration’s goal to decarbonize the power sector by 2035 to mitigate climate change. That’s why the White House wants to ensure clean energy powers future AI infrastructure, according to the release.