Good to see what? "Encourage" means nothing, every example listed in the document is more exploitative than supportive.
Today, Google and Apple both already sell AI products that technically fall under this definition, and did without government "encouragement" in the mix. There isn't a single actionable thing mentioned that would promote further development of such models.
It’s primarily motivated by control; similar to how all narcissistic, abusive, controlling, murderous, “dominating” (as the document itself proclaims) people and systems are. That is not motivated by magnanimity and genuine shared interest or focus on precision and accuracy.
The controllers of the whole system want open weights and source to make sure models aren’t going to expose the population to unapproved ideas and allow the spread of unapproved thoughts or allow making unapproved connections or ask unapproved questions without them being suitably countered to keep everyone in line with the system.
Obviously AI is a massive and important area for economic growth. But so is clean energy. And both right now are at an inflection point.
It seems the US is going to thrive with the former but naively stick our heads in the sands with the latter.
We’ll cede economic leadership, and wonder in 20 years what happened as other countries lead in energy. Even worse, the administrations stance will encourage US energy companies to pursue bad strategies, letting them avoid transforming their business. In 10-20 years they'll be bankrupt and the US will probably have to bail them out for strategic reasons.
The US is not naively sticking our heads in the sand, our leadership is making direct choices to make sure that they rule over the ashes rather than let a future happen where they have less power.
Overall US Energy production has been expanding, faster, each recent year. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/. This is all before you factor in the recent attention to Nuclear, which could come online within the next decade.
The ice caps may be worse off for it, but there's little reason to think the USA will cease to "lead in energy" anytime soon.
It's part of the current administration's energy agenda, President Trump signed executive orders a couple of months ago, to increase nuclear energy capacity by 400% in the next 25 years, revising regulations, and expediting review and approval of reactor projects, which seems like the most effective strategy for expanding clean energy production.
Trump has signed a number of bills aimed at ramping up the nuclear center, which is the best-available renewable energy source based on current tech, aside from geothermal, assuming recent developments continue to pan out.
The only country that the US needs to worry about beating them in the clean energy race is China. They’re building energy plants like crazy (though worth noting, not all of their plants are clean energy).
> wonder in 20 years what happened as other countries lead in energy
Can you clarify what leading in energy means? And what concerns do you have?
Do you mean we, in the U.S. are in a tarpit of regulations and red tape that makes setting up a nuclear power plant up impossible? Or something else?
IMHO, leading in energy also needs to take into account where that energy takes us and what it unlocks. I immigrated to the U.S. so I am extremely bullish so do consider that below.
My California perspective is that energy is going to be even more decentralized. I have not paid an electric bill in years and get a check from my utility once a year where they pay me wholesale rates for my net export. I net export because I rarely use any meaningful energy at night that my 5kwH battery pack cannot provide. Once battery prices fall even further, I will dump everything into my local storage and draw no gross power from my utility at all. For all practical purposes, I will be off grid.
Anyone in California has the technological ability to get there as well. The utilities dump GWh of solar energy because we produce so much!
The issue we have in the U.S. is one of horrible policies and regulation.
Your typical townhouse in the city block isn't going to be able to put 20 panels on their roof because their HOA is going to throw a fit. The owner won't be allowed to install it themselves and would have to pay an electrician tens of thousands of dollars because the city isn't going to permit it otherwise. The obstacle of installing $5k worth of parts is incredibly disappointing.
From my perspective, technologically, solar energy is going to become cheaper as storage continues to fall in price.
This will empower increasing productivity. In my case, once the GPU market becomes consumer friendly and less constrained, or fundamentally different LLMs are released that are CPU friendly but I can't imagine that possibility yet, I will buy more GPUs and increase my self host LLM capacity. Today, as of right now I an getting "Insufficient capacity" errors from AWS attempting to launch a g6.2xlarge cluster and puny 24GB GPUs cost a lot making renting from AWS a better choice. The responses from the coding models blow my mind. They often meet or beat the kind of code I would expect from a junior engineer I would have to pay $120k/yr for and that would be a cheap engineer in SoCal. A GPU cluster including running costs would be fraction of that so I would be able to expand quicker with less.
Whole offices are going to become more compact and continue to become decentralized or even remote. Their carbon footprint is then going to go practically zero (no office security patrol, no HVAC, no heating, etc). More people will be able to start businesses (higher GDP) with less, increasing the GDP per Co2 emissions.
My childhood friends in the E.U who are in the same space that I am in are less enthusiastic. My friends in Germany who bought a hundred PV panels is not happy at all.
So which country will lead in energy and what would they be doing?
People love using their pet issue as the sole explanation for why something did or didn't happen. It's never that simple.
My boomer boss thinks writing tests is unnecessary and slows shipping down. It might be true, but it fails to appreciate the full scope of the problem.
The most important thing here IMHO is the strong stance taken towards open source and open weight AI models. This stance puts the US government at odds with some other regulatory initiatives like the EU AI Act (which doesn't outlaw open weight models and does have some exemptions below 10²⁵ FLOPS, but still places a fairly daunting regulatory burden on decentralized open projects).
I don't know if this counts as amazing optimism or just straight up blinders if that's your takeaway compared to the emphasis placed on non-renewable energy and government enforced ideology.
How much land mass would need to be covered by solar panels to power this future AI infrastructure. Yes, I'm implying that solar would be impractical, but I'm also genuinely curious.
"Counter Chinese Influence in International Governance Bodies" and grouping them in with US "adversaries" and "rivals" is quite undiplomatic language to throw in under "Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security" section. Diplomacy with China should be an important part of this initiative but will inevitably be bungled.
Even if it’s not perfect, I’m happy to see there’s a focus on AI Security. NIST has been a reliable producer of quality international standards for cybersecurity. Hopefully this action plan will lead to similarly high quality recommendations for AI Security.
I've seen several European initiatives similar to this before, and the same question is always asked: what does this actually do?
People (at least on HN) seem to be in agreement the Europe is too regulatory and bureaucratic, so it feels fair to question the practicality of any American initiatives, as we do for European ones.
What does this document practically enact today? Is there any actual money allocated? Deregulation seems to be a theme, so are there any examples of regulations which have been cleansed already? How about planning? This document is full of directives and the names of federal agencies which plan to direct, so what are the actual results of said plans that we can see today and in the coming years?
Removing Red Tape and Onerous Regulation
Ensure that Frontier AI Protects Free Speech and American Values
Encourage Open-Source and Open-Weight AI
Enable AI Adoption
Empower American Workers in the Age of AI
Support Next-Generation Manufacturing
Invest in AI-Enabled Science
Build World-Class Scientific Datasets
Advance the Science of AI 9
Invest in AI Interpretability, Control, and Robustness Breakthroughs
Build an AI Evaluations Ecosystem
Accelerate AI Adoption in Government
Drive Adoption of AI within the Department of Defense
Protect Commercial and Government AI Innovations
Combat Synthetic Media in the Legal System
I can’t take this seriously, as recent actions by this administration directly contradicts a few of these stated goals.
Or maybe I don’t want to, because this sounds dangerous to me at this time.
> Update Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model (LLM) developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias
If foundation model companies want their government contracts renewed, they are going to have to make sure their AI output aligns with this administration's version of "truth".
And so it begins. Both the US president and the president of China have demonstrated they see AI as a competition between their respective countries. This will be an interesting ride, if nothing else.
I love how practically all goals in this Action Plan are directed towards incentivizing AI usage… except for the very last one, which specifically says to “Combat Synthetic Media in the Legal System”.
Given that LLMs, for instance, are all about creating synthetic media, I don’t know how this last goal can be reconciled with the others.
> In the AI context, DEI includes the suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex; manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs; incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism; and discrimination on the basis of race or sex. DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI.
> Many of America’s most critical sectors, such as
healthcare, are especially slow to adopt due to a variety of factors, including distrust or lack of understanding of the technology, a complex regulatory landscape, and a lack of clear governance and risk mitigation standards. A coordinated Federal effort would be beneficial in establishing a dynamic, “try-first” culture for AI across American industry.
I'm sure "move fast and break things" will work out great for health care.
And there are already "clear governance and risk mitigation standards" in health care, they're just not compatible with "try first" and use unproven things.
From the very first sentence, I can already tell we are doomed if the right breakthroughs are made. It's like people's brains short-circuit when they imagine all the power and wealth that they might command through AI, and they don't take the extra two seconds to consider that any super intelligent system that can deliver on these promises will likely be very quickly outside of their control by definition.
Even during the interval of time these remained under human control, we are talking about people like Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg unilaterally wielding unprecedented economic power. What evidence is there in their behavior or human history in general to believe that this would be anything but bad for the majority of the worlds population?
Meanwhile these companies have been able to successfully nerd-snipe a small army of engineers who are right at that sweet spot of technical excellence and naivete. I won't say this is actually that difficult as these traits actually seem highly correlated in that population as a whole, but they have become the willing instruments of masters which will discard them at the first opportunity.
A global commitment to banning the development of AGI is the only sane response, and the number of people to whom this very premise itself sounds insane tells you just how fucked we are if they pull this off even halfway.
> We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day. Simply put, we need to “Build, Baby, Build!”
> prediction: nothing will follow from this except the low effort stuff (i.e. nothing but speeches and expenses)
Hundred million contracts with zero results. Conservative ideology is based on the idea that certain people is just above others and they deserve more for free meanwhile working class health expenses are a luxury and need to be cut down.
In Canada with a state broadcaster you can get credit from low information votes just by announcing a program without ever implementing or funding it.
Pravda!
"Ensure that Frontier AI Protects Free Speech and American Values
AI systems will play a profound role in how we educate our children, do our jobs, and consume media. It is essential that these systems be built from the ground up with freedom of speech and expression in mind, and that U.S. government policy does not interfere with that objective.
We must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas."
It seems that everywhere free speech is mentioned today, the intent is to do the exactly opposite....
[+] [-] LorenDB|8 months ago|reply
It's good to see this, especially since they acknowledge that open weights is not equal to open source.
[+] [-] rs186|8 months ago|reply
In fact, if you open the PDF file and navigate to that section, the content is barely relevant at all.
[+] [-] cardamomo|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ActorNightly|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bigyabai|8 months ago|reply
Today, Google and Apple both already sell AI products that technically fall under this definition, and did without government "encouragement" in the mix. There isn't a single actionable thing mentioned that would promote further development of such models.
[+] [-] hopelite|8 months ago|reply
The controllers of the whole system want open weights and source to make sure models aren’t going to expose the population to unapproved ideas and allow the spread of unapproved thoughts or allow making unapproved connections or ask unapproved questions without them being suitably countered to keep everyone in line with the system.
[+] [-] jsnider3|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] belter|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] softwaredoug|8 months ago|reply
It seems the US is going to thrive with the former but naively stick our heads in the sands with the latter.
We’ll cede economic leadership, and wonder in 20 years what happened as other countries lead in energy. Even worse, the administrations stance will encourage US energy companies to pursue bad strategies, letting them avoid transforming their business. In 10-20 years they'll be bankrupt and the US will probably have to bail them out for strategic reasons.
[+] [-] taurath|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Lonestar1440|8 months ago|reply
The ice caps may be worse off for it, but there's little reason to think the USA will cease to "lead in energy" anytime soon.
[+] [-] pizzafeelsright|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] MangoToupe|8 months ago|reply
Is it? Sure it helps sell chips, but where is it actually driving measurable efficiency improvements?
[+] [-] 2600|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kulahan|8 months ago|reply
The only country that the US needs to worry about beating them in the clean energy race is China. They’re building energy plants like crazy (though worth noting, not all of their plants are clean energy).
[+] [-] subhobroto|8 months ago|reply
Can you clarify what leading in energy means? And what concerns do you have?
Do you mean we, in the U.S. are in a tarpit of regulations and red tape that makes setting up a nuclear power plant up impossible? Or something else?
IMHO, leading in energy also needs to take into account where that energy takes us and what it unlocks. I immigrated to the U.S. so I am extremely bullish so do consider that below.
My California perspective is that energy is going to be even more decentralized. I have not paid an electric bill in years and get a check from my utility once a year where they pay me wholesale rates for my net export. I net export because I rarely use any meaningful energy at night that my 5kwH battery pack cannot provide. Once battery prices fall even further, I will dump everything into my local storage and draw no gross power from my utility at all. For all practical purposes, I will be off grid.
Anyone in California has the technological ability to get there as well. The utilities dump GWh of solar energy because we produce so much!
The issue we have in the U.S. is one of horrible policies and regulation.
Your typical townhouse in the city block isn't going to be able to put 20 panels on their roof because their HOA is going to throw a fit. The owner won't be allowed to install it themselves and would have to pay an electrician tens of thousands of dollars because the city isn't going to permit it otherwise. The obstacle of installing $5k worth of parts is incredibly disappointing.
From my perspective, technologically, solar energy is going to become cheaper as storage continues to fall in price.
This will empower increasing productivity. In my case, once the GPU market becomes consumer friendly and less constrained, or fundamentally different LLMs are released that are CPU friendly but I can't imagine that possibility yet, I will buy more GPUs and increase my self host LLM capacity. Today, as of right now I an getting "Insufficient capacity" errors from AWS attempting to launch a g6.2xlarge cluster and puny 24GB GPUs cost a lot making renting from AWS a better choice. The responses from the coding models blow my mind. They often meet or beat the kind of code I would expect from a junior engineer I would have to pay $120k/yr for and that would be a cheap engineer in SoCal. A GPU cluster including running costs would be fraction of that so I would be able to expand quicker with less.
Whole offices are going to become more compact and continue to become decentralized or even remote. Their carbon footprint is then going to go practically zero (no office security patrol, no HVAC, no heating, etc). More people will be able to start businesses (higher GDP) with less, increasing the GDP per Co2 emissions.
My childhood friends in the E.U who are in the same space that I am in are less enthusiastic. My friends in Germany who bought a hundred PV panels is not happy at all.
So which country will lead in energy and what would they be doing?
[+] [-] upquacker|8 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] infamouscow|8 months ago|reply
My boomer boss thinks writing tests is unnecessary and slows shipping down. It might be true, but it fails to appreciate the full scope of the problem.
[+] [-] AlanYx|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rs186|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wredcoll|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mlsu|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] josh-sematic|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] davidmurdoch|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] newsclues|8 months ago|reply
Solar is great for rooftops of houses, it’s not really great to run a DC 24/7 without batteries.
[+] [-] andsoitis|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wyager|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yoyohello13|8 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nsypteras|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] adestefan|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mkolodny|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] anonyonoor|8 months ago|reply
People (at least on HN) seem to be in agreement the Europe is too regulatory and bureaucratic, so it feels fair to question the practicality of any American initiatives, as we do for European ones.
What does this document practically enact today? Is there any actual money allocated? Deregulation seems to be a theme, so are there any examples of regulations which have been cleansed already? How about planning? This document is full of directives and the names of federal agencies which plan to direct, so what are the actual results of said plans that we can see today and in the coming years?
[+] [-] Mobius01|8 months ago|reply
I can’t take this seriously, as recent actions by this administration directly contradicts a few of these stated goals.
Or maybe I don’t want to, because this sounds dangerous to me at this time.
[+] [-] timoth3y|8 months ago|reply
If foundation model companies want their government contracts renewed, they are going to have to make sure their AI output aligns with this administration's version of "truth".
[+] [-] octopoc|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] thimabi|8 months ago|reply
Given that LLMs, for instance, are all about creating synthetic media, I don’t know how this last goal can be reconciled with the others.
[+] [-] lesuorac|8 months ago|reply
Move fast and break things I guess?
[+] [-] Karawebnetwork|8 months ago|reply
"PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT"
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
> In the AI context, DEI includes the suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex; manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs; incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism; and discrimination on the basis of race or sex. DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI.
[+] [-] Thrymr|8 months ago|reply
I'm sure "move fast and break things" will work out great for health care.
And there are already "clear governance and risk mitigation standards" in health care, they're just not compatible with "try first" and use unproven things.
[+] [-] qrios|8 months ago|reply
Is this a reference to the AMD chip, or just a fragment of a removed numbered list?
Edit: It‘s a fragment of the PDF-to-HTML [1]
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44661843
[+] [-] paradox242|8 months ago|reply
Even during the interval of time these remained under human control, we are talking about people like Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg unilaterally wielding unprecedented economic power. What evidence is there in their behavior or human history in general to believe that this would be anything but bad for the majority of the worlds population?
Meanwhile these companies have been able to successfully nerd-snipe a small army of engineers who are right at that sweet spot of technical excellence and naivete. I won't say this is actually that difficult as these traits actually seem highly correlated in that population as a whole, but they have become the willing instruments of masters which will discard them at the first opportunity.
A global commitment to banning the development of AGI is the only sane response, and the number of people to whom this very premise itself sounds insane tells you just how fucked we are if they pull this off even halfway.
[+] [-] mbgerring|8 months ago|reply
> We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day. Simply put, we need to “Build, Baby, Build!”
[+] [-] HSO|8 months ago|reply
newsflash: it doesnt matter what you "plan". you wont do it. because you cant.
it´s called state incapacity. you´re institutionally incapable.
prediction: nothing will follow from this except the low effort stuff (i.e. nothing but speeches and expenses)
[+] [-] Frieren|8 months ago|reply
Hundred million contracts with zero results. Conservative ideology is based on the idea that certain people is just above others and they deserve more for free meanwhile working class health expenses are a luxury and need to be cut down.
[+] [-] jonplackett|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] newsclues|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wormius|8 months ago|reply
Sorry... not elected... sworn in... with the book 'To Serve Man'
[+] [-] dakial1|8 months ago|reply
It seems that everywhere free speech is mentioned today, the intent is to do the exactly opposite....
[+] [-] loco5niner|8 months ago|reply
https://www.ai.gov/
Then click "fact sheets", "remarks", and "articles". He's everywhere.
That's how unbiased this is going to be.
(hint, the answer is one)