President Donald Trump signed an executive order Nov. 24 to combine the efforts of all 17 national laboratories, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to accelerate scientific research through AI. 

Titled the “Genesis Mission,” the initiative intends to combine efforts from these national labs with federal data and private companies, combining the labs’ data and resources into “one living system for discovery,” as described in a video on the initiative’s website. 

“America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence,” Trump’s executive order said. “The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories … (and) world-renowned universities … to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.” 

While Berkeley Lab is not part of UC Berkeley, the UC system oversees management of Berkeley Lab for the Department of Energy. 

Comparing the urgency of the mission to the Manhattan Project during World War II, the executive order claims the newly integrated AI platform is set to be the world’s largest collection of federal scientific datasets. 

“(The national labs’ data) is not primarily new data, but rather data that needs to be made AI-ready for use in new science-focused AI models. New data will be collected as the needs of the AI models are identified,” said Matt Nerzig, a spokesperson for Berkeley Lab, in an email. “What is new is that we’re trying to use all the data we have to train AI.” 

The goals of the mission outline potential breakthroughs in quantum computing, life-saving medicines, energy and national security. 

Beyond the 17 laboratories, the Genesis Mission includes private-public involvement, with contributions from Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google and OpenAI among the listed collaborators. 

The executive order states the Genesis Mission will be consistent with applicable law, privacy and intellectual property protections, in relation to the release of all new federal data. 

The mission is a lab-wide effort, as described by Nerzig, and will include participation from professionals across “virtually every scientific discipline.” 

“A new revolution begins, one guided not by competition alone, but by curiosity, imagination and the belief that discovery is the truest form of progress,” a video on the Genesis Mission’s website said.