At Thursday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about working with National Laboratories.
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00:00Thank you, Madam Chair. And first, I want to begin by recognizing and thanking Mr. Altman and Mr. Smith for your organization's ongoing involvement in the NIST USAI Safety Institute, as well as Dr. Su and Mr. Altman for your ongoing partnerships with our national laboratories.
00:19Now, Dr. Su and Mr. Altman, can you explain how your partnership with the national labs support scientific research? You explained this to a question that was asked by Senator Duckworth as well, but if you could just touch on that quickly.
00:34Our latest models, like O3, are good at scientific reasoning. And so scientists are able to use these to help them review literature, come up with new ideas, propose experiments, analyze data in a way that the previous generations of models
00:49just couldn't. We've had the national labs and other scientists spend time with previous models and they say, oh, this is, you know, kind of cool. It's interesting.
00:56It's not transforming things. These new models are the first time we're hearing from scientists at the national labs and elsewhere that this is a legitimate game changer to their research output.
01:06Appreciate that. Dr. Su?
01:08Yeah, I would add the same. I think our partnerships with the national labs have seen just a tremendous opportunity.
01:14We have large-scale compute across the national labs and the ability to really develop new applications that take advantage of, let's call it traditional, high-performance computing, together with the new AI model capability that we just talked about is, I think, a great opportunity to substantially move forward the ability for scientific discovery.
01:34To both of you, again, can you explain why federal investment in foundational research and standards bodies are crucial to your companies?
01:42I think standards can help increase the rate of innovation, but it's important that the industry figure out what they should be first.
01:54I think a bad standard can really set things back, and we've seen many examples of that in history.
01:59I do think there's a new protocol to discover here at the level of importance of HTTP.
02:04This is just one example. There's many other things, too.
02:06I believe the industry will figure that out through some fits and starts, and then I think officially adopting that can be helpful.
02:13Dr. Su?
02:14I believe public-private partnerships really enable us to think, let's call it, ahead of the curve.
02:19So there are lots of things that we do in industry, and we do them very, very well.
02:23However, the beauty of the national labs and federal research is it does allow, let's call it, a bit more blue sky research, and I think that's a very, you know, positive add.
02:32So I think the key is how we can make sure that, you know, one federal dollar goes much, much further than that with a private investment on top of that.
02:40Yesterday, I reintroduced a piece of legislation called the Test AI Act, which has bipartisan support, which would simply improve the federal government's capacity to test and evaluate in this area as well.
02:54So I very much appreciate both your responses.
02:57But this is just one of many steps, I would argue, that is needed to ensure that the United States stays ahead.
03:04Now, despite strong support across the country, including from industry leaders here today, President Trump's annihilating budgets for basic research, and there are questions abound by so many, I'll argue that this will destroy our nation's competitive advantage.
03:20I simply just call on all my colleagues that we look at the investments to the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Energy Office of Science.
03:29Let's work together.
03:29If there's questions that we have, let's find ways to address those.
03:33But let's ensure that these investments are making a positive difference so that we have more successes and more hearings celebrating what we're celebrating today.
03:41Now, beyond your partnership with the federal government, I would like to know more about how you partner with local communities when building out centers.
03:49Data centers put a strain on energy and water resources.
03:52However, unlike other businesses, they do not introduce many long-term jobs and economic benefits necessarily.
03:58So, Mr. Smith, how many engineers do you have dedicated to model or hardware optimization to reduce energy use?
04:06And when you build a center, what initiatives do you have in place to reduce water use?
04:12I don't know off the top of my head the number of engineers working on optimization, but I'd be happy to track down an answer and get it to you.
04:20Water use is a huge priority, especially, you know, in data centers, for example, in the southwestern United States and other countries around the world where water is in short supply.
04:33If you look at our data centers today, they run on liquid cooling.
04:38It's a closed-loop system.
04:40The liquid is a combination of, frankly, water and other chemicals, but basically, once it starts running, almost all of the water is recycled.
04:50So, the amount of water that we consume is typically far, far smaller than what most people would estimate.
04:57We also have a commitment to water replenishment.
05:00Our goal is to be water-positive, meaning that we're providing more water to the community than we are consuming.
05:07So, for example, across the United States today, we have more than 90 water replenishment projects, including one that focuses on the San Juan River in your state of New Mexico, which focuses on water security for the river.
05:22So, I think it's a good example of how we can play a responsible role in addressing an issue that is of growing importance.
05:30Appreciate it.
05:31Mr. Trader?
05:32Same question.
05:33Yeah, I can't answer the question of how many engineers we have focused on it, but I will say that the ability to extract more computational power out of a given megawatt is of paramount importance to my company, to all of us in this room.
05:54And we spend an enormous amount of time integrating the most bleeding-edge technology, which is a step function more efficient in terms of its computational output than the legacy technology has historically done.
06:14So, moving to liquid cooling has just been an incredible improvement in efficiency, and ultimately, we face this problem from, you know, within a given data center, within a given power envelope, how much can we move the computational resources forward?
06:36And that's really an important part of what we do.
06:38I appreciate it.
06:39Mr. Chairman, I have other questions I'll submit to the record.
06:41Mr. Moran did ask one question, Mr. Altman, you responded to it, but can you all just answer yes or no?
06:46Is it important to ensure that in order for AI to reach its full prominence, that people across the country should be able to connect to fast, affordable internet?
06:54Dr. Hsu?
06:56Yes.
06:57Yes.
06:58Mr. Richard?
06:58Yes.
06:59Appreciate it.
06:59I yield back.
07:01Senator Lummis.
07:02Thank you, Mr.