Trump's AI 'Genesis Mission': what are the risks and opportunities?

"An executive order issued on 24 November instructs the US Department of Energy (DoE) to create a platform through which academic researchers and AI firms can create powerful AI models using the government's scientific data. Framed as part of a race for global technology dominance, it lists collaborations with technology firms including Microsoft, IBM, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, as well as quantum-computing companies such as Quantinuum. Such a vast public-private partnership would give companies unprecedented access to federal scientific data sets for AI-driven analysis."

"The effort, dubbed the Genesis Mission, aims to "double the productivity and impact of American research and innovation within a decade", in a variety of fields from fusion energy to medicine. The project expects to "unlock breakthroughs in medicine, energy, materials science, and beyond", says Michael Kratsios, the US president's science adviser. It also aims to build AI agents - general models with the ability to harness tools such as specialized software and coding suites- that can generate hypotheses and automate research workflows."

"Labs around the world are already training AI systems on scientific data, to boost their capabilities in scientific domains and attempting to use AI models to make discoveries. But some researchers remain sceptical that general AI tools are capable of making truly fresh insights, and warn that their inherent flaws make the value of agents unclear. The new US initiative formalizes and expands ongoing AI research efforts by the administration of President Donald Trump."

An executive order directs the Department of Energy to build a platform enabling academic researchers and AI firms to train powerful AI models on federal scientific data and national laboratories' computing resources. The project, called the Genesis Mission, partners with major tech and quantum companies to grant unprecedented access to data and compute for AI-driven analysis. The mission aims to double research productivity and impact within a decade, target breakthroughs across medicine, energy and materials, and create AI agents that generate hypotheses and automate workflows. Some researchers warn that general AI agents may lack the reliability to produce genuinely novel insights.

Read at Nature