Expect AI Developers to Benefit from Energy Buildouts, Face Chip Uncertainty Under Trump, Experts Say; Are LLMs Reaching a Plateau?

We don’t know how Donald Trump and his administration will handle open-source artificial intelligence, as Stephanie wrote on Wednesday. But AI developers in the U.S. should expect to benefit from easier access to more energy sources and face fresh uncertainty in the AI chip industry, policy experts said on a call with subscribers to The Information on Wednesday.

Power has become a major concern for those building AI models and operating data centers, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google all striking deals with nuclear energy providers over the past year, and the Financial Times reported that Meta Platforms is planning to build a data center powered by nuclear energy. But using nuclear power involves higher regulatory hurdles, and federal regulators last week rejected a proposal related to Amazon’s deal to buy power from a nuclear power plant operator. That could change under Trump.

Trump’s administration is likely to prioritize building out energy and data center capacity, “mostly taking the form of deregulation,” said Gregory Allen, who directs the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.