Raimondo: "AI Will Be The Defining Technology Of Our Generation"

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, speaking at an event hosted by CSIS on implementation of the USD$50 billion CHIPS Act, states that the US, "cannot lead the world" on technology with such "a shaky foundation," of research, development, and production of leading-edge semiconductors.

• Raimondo: "The CHIPS initiative mirrors the space race... President Biden is calling on the nation to unite around a common purpose so once again we can once cement our leadership role in this global technology race..."
• Raimondo says AI, "has been a gamechanger in the demand for chips," adding that when the administration initially formulated the CHIPS Act, generative AI wasn't even, "part of our vocabular. Now it's everywhere. It take 10s of 100s of leading edge semiconductor chips to train a single large language model."
• Raimondo: "AI will be the defining technology of our generation. You can't lead in AI if you don't lead in making leading-edge chips. So our work in implementing the CHIPS Act just got a whole lot more important."
• Raimondo says that the US leads in many parts of the semiconductor industry but warns, "we don't manufacture of package any leading-edge chips that we need to fuel AI and our whole innovation ecosystem including chips for our national defence."
• Raimondo again hints that another major chips stimulus package may be needed in the future. Unlike other big-ticket Biden administration legislation, the CHIP Act was a strongly bipartisan effort suggesting that additional stimulus may be viable regardless of November's general election result.