Joe Biden Signs Executive Order To Speed Up AI Data Center Construction

January 14, 2025AIJenThorpe

President Biden issued an executive order today aimed at speeding the development of AI data centers in the U.S, The Verge reported.

It directs the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Energy (DOE) to lease federal sites to private companies building gigawatt-scale AI data centers and clean power facilities. It also tells federal agencies to “prioritize” and speed up permitting of AI infrastructure. The measure could create “categorical exclusions” to speed environmental review under the National Environmental Protection Act.

Developing new AI tools is an increasingly energy-hungry endeavor. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration seems to think it’s worth the risk of further derailing US climate goals and putting additional pressure on already stressed power grids.

“We will not let America be out-built when it come to the technology that will define the future,” Joe Biden said in a statement today.

Prior to the announcement today — in response to reports that the White House was considering measures to fast track data center development — environmental and consumer advocacy groups as well as Democratic lawmakers had urged the White House to avoid exempting AI from typical permitting procedures and environmental standards.

CNBC reported President Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday aimed at speeding up domestic construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure and shoring up the national security risk involved in the technology.

The move empowers the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy to lease federal sites for gigawatt-scale AI data centers.

“AI is poised to have large effects across our economy, including in health care, transportation, education, and beyond, and it’s too important to be offshored,” the White House said in a release.

The order also issued guidelines for AI developers using sites to not only build, operate and painting the leased centers at full cost, but also to deliver clean energy resources to match their capacity needs to prevent increases in electricity costs.

Companies leasing the federal lands will also be required to purchase an “appropriate share” of U.S.-manufactured semiconductors and to pay workers “prevailing wages,” according to the release. After the agencies select the sites, developers can submit lease proposals.

The Mercury News reported President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that seeks to ensure the infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations, such as large-scale data centers and new clean power facilities, can be built quickly and at scale in the United States.

The executive order directs federal agencies to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure development at government sites, while imposing requirements and safeguards on the developers on those locations. It also directs certain agencies to make federal sites available for AI data centers and new clean power facilities.

Biden’s “AI Diffusion Rule” Targets Export Limits on AI GPUs #1791

January 13, 2025PodcastKirk

The Biden administration’s “AI diffusion rule” restricts the export of GPUs crucial for AI, primarily to curb China’s AI advancements. The rule establishes three licensing tiers, with China and other adversarial nations effectively barred from accessing top-tier GPUs. Critics, including the Semiconductor Industry Association and NVIDIA, argue the policy risks harming U.S. competitiveness and fostering alliances with China. A 120-day comment period leaves its fate uncertain.

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US Imposes Export Controls On Chips For AI To Counter China

January 13, 2025chipsJenThorpe

The US is imposing expansive export controls on chips used for artificial intelligence in an effort to make it harder for China and other adversaries to get access to advanced technology with military applications, Financial Times reported.

Joe Biden’s administration on Monday unveiled an export control regime that gives 20 close allies and partners uninhibited access to AI-related chips while placing licensing requirements on most other countries. The move faced immediate pushback from the US semiconductor industry.

The policy aims to make it harder for China to use other countries to circumvent existing US restrictions and get technology that can be used for everything from nuclear weapons to hypersonic missiles.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “The rule both provides greater clarity to our international partners and to industry and counters the serious circumvention and related national security risks posed by countries of concern and malicious actors who may seek to use the advanced American technologies agains us.”

The regime creates a three-tier licensing system for chips used to power data centres that process AI computation. The top tier, which includes G7 members in addition to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Ireland will face no restrictions.

The White House posted: FACT CHECK: Ensuring U.S. Security and Economic Strength In the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming central to both security and economic strength. The United States must act decisively to lead this transition by ensuring that U.S. technology undergirds global AI use and that adversaries cannot easily abuse advanced AI.

In the wrong hands, powerful AI systems have the potential to exacerbate significant national security risks, including by enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, supporting powerful offensive cyber operations, and aiding human rights abuses, such as mass surveillance. Today countries of concern actively employ AI — including U.S.-made AI – in this way, and to seek to undermine US. AI leadership.

To enhance U.S. national security and economic strength, it is essential that we do not offshore this critical technology and that the world’s AI runs on American rails. It is important to work with AI companies and foreign governments to put in place security and trust standards as they build out their AI ecosystems….

TechCrunch reported: Within a week left in office, President Joe Biden introduced a newest set of guidelines and restrictions for exporting U.S. made chips.

On Monday, the administration its Interim Final Rule on AI diffusion. This ruling is meant to “provide clarity to allied and partner nations about how they can benefit from AI.” and streamline licensing hurdles for chip orders, according to a White House press release. But these rules also introduce new chip sale restrictions on the majority of the countries in the world.

In my opinion, I hope that the intent of the White House is going to benefit the United States while also preventing some other countries from using AI.

Zuckerberg Makes Amends With Trump

January 12, 2025Facebook, MetaJenThorpe

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week that Meta would pivot its moderation policies to allow for more “free expression” was widely viewed as the company’s latest effort to appease President-elect Donald Trump, CNBC News reported.

More than any of its Silicon Valley peers, Meta has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November.

That follows a highly contentious four years between the two during Trump’s first term in office, which ended with Facebook — similar to other social media companies — banning Trump from it’s platform.

With Meta now positioning itself to be a key player in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg recognizes the need for White House support as his company builds data center and pursues policies that will allow it to fulfill its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company’s plans who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter.

Meta declined to comment for this article.

New York Post reported: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg parked his private jet right next to Trump Force One on Friday during a visit to Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with the incoming 47th president.

Zuckerberg, 40, was dressed up in a fitted suit and tie when he was spotted boarding his Gulfstream G650 jet at Palm Beach International Airport.

The tech titan’s jet was parked in the shadows of President-elect Donald Trump’s much larger, custom Boeing 757 aircraft, which he’ll trade in for Air Force One in less than two weeks.

Earlier in the day, the billionaire Facebook founder met with Trump at his nearby Mar-a-Lago estate, a source told the Post.

It’s at least the second time Zuckerberg has convened with Trump, 78, at Mar-a-Lago since the president-elect’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Zuckerberg, who also held at least two private phone conversations with Trump over the summer, has sought to rehabilitate his relationship with the incoming president after his social media platforms banned him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Benzinga reported: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has much bigger fences to mend with President-elect Donald Trump than the Silicon Valley tech giants and other billionaires who have been making the trek to Mar-a-Lago since the November elections.

Friday’s visit, reported by The New York Post, was Zuckerberg’s second meeting with Trump since the 2024 election.

The Facebook founder’s relationship with Trump profoundly soured after Meta Platforms banned outgoing President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Meta lifted the remaining restrictions on Trump’s accounts in July.

Matt Mullenweg Deactivates WordPress Accounts Of Contributors Planning A Fork

January 11, 2025wordpressJenThorpe

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project, TechCrunch reported.

While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built atop WordPress, for profiteering without giving much back. Things soon escalated, with WP Engine filing a lawsuit after it was banned from accessing key WordPress resources, and then a court ordered WordPress to restore access.

Mullenweg, for his part, has publicly supported the notion of a WordPress fork — a term that describes when someone takes the code from an open source project and creates a copy, which can take on a life of its own, with a separate community of contributors.

Earlier this week, Automattic announced it would reduce its contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with WP Engine’s own contribution, a metric measured in weekly hours.

“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort,” Mullenweg wrote.

Matt Mullenweg posted on WordPress:

In open source, one thing that makes it even harder to ship great software is bringing together disparate groups of contributors who may have entirely different incentives or missions or philosophies about how to make great work. Working together on a team is such a delicate balance balance, and even one person rowing in the wrong direction can throw everyone else off.

That’s why periodically I think it is very healthy for open source projects to fork, it allows for people to try out and experiment with different forms of governance, leadership, decision-making and technical approaches. As I’ve said, forking is beautiful, and forks have my full support and we’ll even link and promote them.

However, in Joost and Karim’s new project, they don’t need to follow our process or put in the hours to prove their worth within the WordPress.org ecosystem, they can just lead by example of shopping code and product to people that they can use, evaluate, and test out for themselves. If they need financial or hosting support it sounds like WP Engine wants to support their fork.

Computerworld reported: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said his decision to reduce his team’s weekly hours working on WordPress by 99%, from 400 hours to 45 hours, was designed to pressure WP Engine to drop its lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic.

“They don’t actually make WordPress. They just resell it,” Mullenweg told Computerworld on Friday evening. “If what they are reselling is no longer getting all the free updates, they have less stuff to sell.”

“It doesn’t make sense for Automattic to pay people to work on all of these things,” he said. “We are under attack and we are circling the wagons. Our number one goal is for WP Engine to drop their expensive lawsuits against me and Automattic.”

In my opinion, it sounds like Matt Mullenweg is unhappy about the decision some of his employees made regarding WordPress forks.

AI’s Data Dilemma: Exhausting Human Knowledge #1790

January 9, 2025InformationTodd Cochrane

Elon Musk claims AI companies have exhausted available human knowledge for training models, pushing reliance on synthetic data. While firms like Meta, Google, and OpenAI already use AI-generated data for fine-tuning, challenges such as hallucinations and diminishing returns arise. Experts warn overusing synthetic data risks “model collapse,” while copyright disputes over data usage intensify.

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Elon Musk Wants To Oust Keir Starmer As UK Prime Minister

January 9, 2025Elon Musk, PoliticsJenThorpe

Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election, according to people briefed on the matter, Financial Times reported.

Musk, the world’s richest man and key confident of US president-elect Donald Trump, is probing how he and his rightwing allies can destabilize the UK Labour government beyond the aggressive posts he has issued his on his social media platform X, the people said.

“His view is that western civilization itself is threatened,” one of the people added.

Musk has sought information about whether it might be possible to build support for alternative British political movements — notably the rightwing populist Reform UK party — to force a change of prime minister before the next election, according to associates.

In the UK, parliamentary system, prime ministers wield power because they lead the party with the most MPs.

The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who has been appointed by Trump to co-lead a project to rein in US government spending, has taken a keen interest in British politics over the past six months, and made increasingly strident criticism of Starmer’s government.

The Irish Times reported: Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Kier Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man and key confident of US president-elect Donald Trump, is probing how he and his right-wing allies can destabilize the UK Labour government beyond his aggressive posts, he has issued on his social media platform X, the people said.

Mr. Musk has sought information about whether it might be possible to build support for alternative British political movements — notably the rightwing populist Reform UK party – to force a change of prime minister before the next election, according to associates.

The chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX and X, who has been appointed by Mr Trump to co-lead a project to rein in US government spending, has taken a keen interest in British politics over the past six months, and made increasingly strident criticism of Mr Starmer’s government.

Fortune reported: Elon Musk’s drift to the far-right and his burgeoning clash with U.K. government is a part of a wider plan to oust prime minister Kier Starmer before the next election and plot the accession of a far-right government, a new report suggests.

Musk has reportedly discussed funding the right-wing Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, to the tune of £100 million while more recently calling for Farage to be replaced.

In my opinion, I don’t think it is a good idea to have the richest man in the world decide what happens with the U.K. government.