The chair of a key Senate committee expressed support this week for the Biden administration’s proposal to increase Federal funding to advance artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and other emerging technologies, along with boosting support for the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Science.
In a hearing on President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 DoE budget request, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the funding hikes would boost America’s ability to compete with adversaries amid a perilous global climate.
“We cannot cut investments without ceding ground,” said Sen. Murray, who chaired the May 22 hearing before the appropriation’s committee’s energy and water development subcommittee. “We have to make sure breakthroughs in AI, quantum computing, clean energy, and so much else are happening here in America.”
The administration’s request would give DoE $51 billion in overall discretionary budget authority for 2025, a 7.5 percent increase over the 2023 level. The proposed budget includes $8.6 billion for the Office of Science, which plays a key role in overseeing programs funded by the CHIPS and Science Act.
President Biden signed the landmark CHIPS and Science legislation in 2022, making up to $52 billion of funding available to incentivize semiconductor makers to establish new manufacturing operations in the United States.
The proposed $8.6 billion for the Office of Science would advance toward the authorized level in the CHIPS and Science Act, supporting research at DOE’s 17 national laboratories and academic and private sector partners “to build and operate world-class scientific user facilities,” according to administration budget documents.
When she questioned Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm at the hearing, Sen. Murray noted that the Office of Science budget proposal marked a significant increase, “coming on the heels” of the fiscal year 2024 appropriation bill that provided the office with $8.24 billion.
“This funding is important for our competitiveness, providing support for our world-class national labs and boosting scientific research,” the senator said. “That research really drives domestic innovation across a lot of different fields – biological and environmental research, AI, machine learning (ML), quantum computing, and clean energy technology. And I really believe that kind of funding is critical for our future.”
Granholm strongly agreed. “We think that quantum, AI, fusion, all of these advanced technologies have to be funded because we are facing global competition,” she told the subcommittee. “We are number one, we’re not going to lose that spot, and that’s why the support from Congress to be able to fund that basic research is so important.”
In her prepared testimony, Granholm said the budget “provides a historic investment of $1.9 billion in advancing critical and emerging technologies, including biotechnology and biomanufacturing, quantum information sciences, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This investment strengthens U.S. leadership in science, technology, and innovation and plays a central role in the Department’s national security mission.”
Specifically for AI, she said, the budget provides $455 million “for supporting the advancement of AI technologies and the development of foundational models to support new applications in science, energy, and national security.”
DoE is also applying AI technologies, Granholm added, to help in its mission of safeguarding the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
DoE has enormous responsibilities in the cybersecurity realm, safeguarding the nuclear stockpile, the national laboratories, and America’s energy systems, which include the power grid, electric utilities, pipelines, and renewable energy generation sources like wind and solar.
In response to a question from Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., Granholm said Biden’s AI executive order (EO) last year “has unleashed a whole swath of activity across agencies,” including in the national labs. “They are places where the tools for leading in AI exist,” she said.