On Monday, the White House launched a new program allowing Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories to collaborate with technology companies and the scientific community in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to advance scientific research. Under the new Genesis Mission, established by presidential decree, the Department of Energy will develop an advanced AI-based platform. This platform will use federal scientific data to train AI models and agents specifically designed for scientific research needs. This move underscores the emphasis President Donald Trump is placing on AI during his second term, following a broad set of initiatives and recommendations he presented in July under the title “AI Action Plan.” The goal of the Genesis Mission is to harness the progress made in AI by the technology and business sectors and apply it to scientific fields such as healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and others, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced at a press briefing on Monday. He also noted that the program will help reduce electricity prices for consumers—an urgent issue amid this year’s increased investment in AI. DOE laboratories have been conducting research for decades in all areas, from energy to healthcare, advanced materials, and quantum science. However, the new platform under this initiative will allow DOE labs, private firms, and academic institutions to exchange information more freely. This, in turn, will help researchers apply AI in fields like physics and chemistry. “The private sector has scaled artificial intelligence massively, but with a slightly different focus—on language, business, processes, and consumer services,” Wright stated. “What we are doing here is simply redirecting those efforts toward scientific discovery and engineering breakthroughs.” Genesis Mission A key element in achieving this goal, according to Wright, is opening access to data sets from DOE national laboratories, including facilities such as Ames National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, among many others. The platform will enable “various federal research agencies” and the “private sector” to collaborate to “win and stay ahead in the AI race,” according to a White House fact sheet. The program’s main focus areas include biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear physics and fusion energy, space exploration, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics. Tech giants have already ramped up collaboration with the DOE: in October, Nvidia and Oracle announced a partnership to build supercomputers for Argonne National Laboratory. PC manufacturer Dell is also developing a supercomputer for use at Berkeley Lab, according to an announcement made in May. The Genesis Mission is intended to stimulate further such deals. Tech companies and scientists have also been exploring AI applications in healthcare for years; for example, Google introduced a family of AI models fine-tuned for the healthcare industry in 2023. However, this momentum toward using AI in scientific research coincides with the technology still facing the challenge of hallucinations—the tendency of a system to generate false information. The directive also addresses a critical issue raised by the AI boom: the load it can place on energy systems. Residential electricity costs are rising, with the average price of electricity in America increasing by 13% since 2022. Data centers, vital for powering AI services and model training, are projected to consume approximately 6.7% to 12% of U.S. electricity in 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023, according to a DOE report. Wright stated that the program “will make our electric grid more efficient and reverse the price increases that have angered American citizens.” However, achieving this goal will not be simple: energy grids already need modernization and maintenance, especially in light of extreme weather events. And the speed of AI development could make it difficult for the energy sector to keep pace as tech giants pour billions into new data centers. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on November 19, 2025. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on November 19, 2025. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Accelerating AI under Trump The decree is just Trump’s latest initiative aimed at speeding up AI development in the U.S. Just last week, Trump spoke at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, where a number of partnerships were announced between American technology companies and Humain AI, a tech firm backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The White House has also implemented unconventional mechanisms involving state interaction with private business as part of Trump’s efforts to ensure American dominance in AI. In August, the U.S. government acquired a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel and struck a deal with AMD and Nvidia to receive 15% of chip sales to China in exchange for export licenses. At the core of Trump’s rushed AI measures is a desire to get ahead of China in this race, amid growing trade tensions between the two economic powers. Chinese tech startup DeepSeek raised concerns in U.S. markets in January with the release of its R1 model, fueling suspicions that China might be further ahead in AI development than previously thought. Trump and some tech giants, such as OpenAI, argue that government regulation can slow the pace of innovation. Trump recently prepared a separate decree aimed at preventing such regulation after Congress rejected a previous attempt to block state laws regulating AI activities. However, deregulation has raised concerns among lawmakers and cybersecurity advocates due to a series of reports this year indicating that AI could contribute to self-harm and psychological distress.
About the Author
