Trump signs executive order launching “Genesis” mission to expedite scientific discovery using AI
WASHINGTON (CBS) – According to SBA, President Trump on Monday signed an executive order meant to accelerate scientific discovery through the use of artificial intelligence, directing the Energy Department and its national labs to build an integrated AI platform using their existing and future supercomputers.
The goal of what the White House is calling the “Genesis Mission” is to speed the research and scientific discovery process by analyzing massive data sets in the science, engineering, energy, and health care spaces from the federal government, university and private sector with supercomputing technology. It’s an AI initiative the White House hopes will result in quicker breakthroughs in areas of research including disease therapies.
Michael Krastios, science adviser to the president, told reporters on a conference call the Genesis mission is “the largest marshaling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo program.”
“By fusing massive federal data sets, advanced supercomputing capabilities, and world-leading scientific facilities, the Genesis mission will use AI to automate experiment design, accelerate simulation and generate protective models for everything from protein folding to fusion plasma dynamics,” Krastios said. “This will shorten discovery timelines from years to days or even hours, empowering scientists to test bolder hypotheses and discover breakthroughs currently unreachable.”
White House officials told reporters on the conference call that they want to bring in AI supercomputing capacity that the private sector is building. The White House said there’s been significant interest from the private sector from companies that include Nvidia and Dell.
The effort will begin with the existing supercomputers at the Department of Energy’s 17 national labs, although the administration intends to build more supercomputers.
It’s not clear, however, how the mission will be funded, and White House officials suggested that more help from Congress could be needed down the road. One of the officials on the call said the Energy Department already operates “some of the best supercomputing facilities in the world.” The official said that the administration will leverage all available resources and, with the help of Congress would “continue to invest increasing amounts for the success of the mission.”
“I think we will see unbelievable advancements in health sciences, so many diseases today that are unfortunate death sentences,” one of the officials on the call said. “We’re going to understand the exact chemistry and biology that they are and how to combat that. We’ve seen progress with that relatively significant progress the last five years. It’s nothing compared to what we’re going to see in the next five years.”
