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AI Leaders Urge Senators to Accelerate Power Permitting and Open Government Data for Enhanced AI Development
AI leaders urge U.S. senators to speed up energy approvals and open government data access to meet soaring AI electricity and infrastructure needs. They call for modernizing power grids and expanding data sets for AI training.
AI Industry Leaders Call on U.S. Senators to Accelerate Power Supply Approvals and Expand Government Data Access
Leading figures in artificial intelligence, including executives from Microsoft, OpenAI, CoreWeave, and AMD, are urging U.S. lawmakers to streamline federal permitting for energy infrastructure and increase access to government data sets. Their goal is to meet the growing demands of AI development and deployment.
Modernizing Infrastructure for AI Energy Needs
Microsoft President Brad Smith emphasized that the U.S. economy relies on infrastructure that is over 50 years old and cannot support the surging electricity requirements driven by AI advancements, manufacturing reshoring, and greater electrification. He highlighted the urgent need for faster federal approval processes to expand power generation and transmission capabilities.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator pointed out the steep rise in energy consumption by data centers. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, electricity use by data centers could nearly triple from 4.4% in 2023 to 12% by 2028. Intrator described the massive computational demand for AI — millions of training hours, billions of queries, and trillions of model parameters — as fueling an "insatiable hunger" for compute power and energy.
Scaling AI Infrastructure Beyond the Cloud
AMD CEO Lisa Su stressed that maintaining leadership in AI requires building data centers at scale powered by reliable, affordable, and clean energy sources. She also noted the importance of integrating AI directly into everyday devices to ensure broad accessibility and dependability, rather than relying solely on cloud-based solutions.
Opening Government Data to Accelerate AI Development
Brad Smith also called for the U.S. government to make its extensive data sets more accessible for AI training, highlighting similar moves by China and the United Kingdom. He described government data as an untapped resource that could significantly accelerate the advancement of AI capabilities if made available to developers and researchers.
- Streamline federal permitting for new energy generation and transmission infrastructure.
- Expand access to high-quality government data sets for AI training purposes.
- Support the growth of AI infrastructure both in large data centers and edge devices.
These recommendations aim to address critical bottlenecks that could slow AI progress, ensuring the U.S. remains competitive in this transformative technology arena.
For those working in government roles, understanding these infrastructure and data priorities is key to supporting policies that foster AI innovation responsibly and sustainably.
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