Why the Data Center Fight Has Little to Do With AI

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, why the data center debate has less to do with AI than you think. Before that in the headlines, the White House unveils its plan to vet AI models to a very selected few. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
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To be honest, guys, I thought that today's main episode is going to be all about this new White House AI framework that they hauled in all the different companies yesterday to discuss. But it appears that while they do have a new safety testing framework, the rest of us don't get to learn the details. Representatives from the leading AI companies attended a meeting with the White House Office of the National Cyber Director on Tuesday to discuss the new framework, but there are very strict limits on who gets to know anything about it. In fact, even AI companies that weren't invited to the meeting won't be told about the policy. Now, as far as we know, representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google attended, but the exact guest list also hasn't been divulged.
As for the policy itself, this is the culmination of the voluntary safety testing framework that was proposed in the June executive order. Companies are invited, quote-unquote, to submit frontier models to the government ahead of release for a maximum of 30 days of safety testing. Only state-of-the-art models that could pose a threat to national security are expected to be covered, although we also don't know exactly how that criteria is determined. It sounds like there is some discussion about the administration and the AI companies failing to reach a common definition, which could muddy the waters for future releases. During safety testing, certain trusted partners, quote-unquote, can gain early access to the models, but again, we have no details on who these partners are or how the system will operate. Specifically, we don't know whether early releases will be limited to US firms and exclude allied governments and foreign companies as we saw with the Mythos rollout.
Much of the coverage has focused on how open-weight models would be treated under the policy. Many have been concerned about the administration cracking down on near-frontier open models, either through this safety testing framework or through a standalone policy. Sources have said, though, that open-weight models would be exempt from the safety testing regime, although there was some disagreement in the press, with the Wall Street Journal publishing that the exemption would only apply to American-made open models, and a few hours later Bloomberg reporting that Chinese open models would also be exempt from testing. That could ultimately be a distinction without a difference, as even if Chinese models were subject to safety testing, what exactly are they going to do? It's unclear how Washington could enforce a release ban on companies that are based in China.
Prins on Twitter summed up, To the surprise of no one, the US government went with the approach that provides it maximum flexibility to deal with any risks posed by AI that might arise in the future. Now, the challenge, of course, is that maximum flexibility for the government comes with minimum knowability for the industry.
Former FTC Chief Technologist Neil Chilston said, A secret process by which the government gets early access to cutting-edge AI? What could go wrong? There may be good reason to classify the benchmark used to test those models. There is no good reason to hide how the program works. Remember what this program does. It gives the government early access to cutting-edge tools and a potential veto over whether the rest of us ever use them. Doing that in secret is no way for a democracy to govern what may be the most important technology of our lifetimes. Secrecy invites abuse. The rules will shift with each new administration, and they will weight national security over economic growth even though lasting security depends on a strong economy. Congress must write any necessary rules in public and in law.