OpenAI's new "blueprint": Invest in AI to beat China
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OpenAI vice president Chris Lehane. Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photo: Andrew Burton for the Washington Post via Getty Images
OpenAI Monday released a list of recommendations around AI competition and regulation — an "economic blueprint" the company is using to kick off a new era of tech policy.
Why it matters: The ChatGPT maker is looking to solidify its position in Washington as a new administration takes power — and Elon Musk, who has feuded with and sued the company, heads to D.C. at Trump's side.
OpenAI's chief goals in the blueprint include:
- Promoting U.S.-made AI to insure the new tech isn't "shaped by autocrats" and authoritarian governments, chiefly China.
- Insuring equitable access to AI and its benefits "from the start."
- "Maximize the economic opportunity of AI for communities across the country" rather than just in coastal tech enclaves.
What they're saying: AI "is an infrastructure technology, it's like electricity," and right now, "there's a window to get all this right," OpenAI VP for global affairs Chris Lehane told Axios.
Key recommendations in OpenAI's blueprint:
- Nationwide "rules of the road" for AI should "preempt a state-by-state tangle."
- Free up the export of advanced "frontier AI" models to "allies and partners" so they can "stand up their own AI ecosystems" based on U.S. rather than Chinese technology.
- AI builders could "form a consortium that identifies best practices for working with the national security community."
- Use the states as "laboratories of democracy" to build AI hubs focusing on their unique data — for instance, Kansas could focus on use of AI in agriculture — so AI jobs and expertise benefit every region.
- Ensure that AI "has the ability to learn from universal, publicly available information, just like humans do, while also protecting creators from unauthorized digital replicas."
- Require AI companies to provide "meaningful amounts of compute" to public universities.
- Streamline and expand support for building new data centers across the U.S. — and "dramatically increase" federal investment in existing and new energy sources and the power grid needed to support them.
Between the lines: Microsoft, Google and other tech giants have many big irons in the Washington fire and face regulatory scrutiny and antitrust lawsuits on multiple fronts.
- OpenAI, by contrast, is still a young company with a singular focus on building advanced AI.
- The company knows that, with Musk, it has a vocal enemy in the incoming administration's highest councils. It wants to make the case for the tangible benefits — jobs and investment — it can offer both blue- and red-state communities.
The bottom line: Lehane frames OpenAI's recommendations as an effort to prove once again the U.S.'s historic ability to "think big, act big, build big" — and keep an edge over China in the global AI race.
- "We've identified $175 billion in dry powder for AI infrastructure that exists internationally right now" — investments in AI that are going to be made soon and quickly, Lehane told Axios. "Is that money going to come to the U.S. or is it going to go to support potentially PRC-led infrastructure?"
