by Helena Fu’s new job puts her in charge of technologies that could produce promising innovations and serious risks in the future.
Fu, who heads the Department of Energy’s (DOE) new Office of Critical Technology and Advancement, is in charge of coordinating the department’s research on artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, semiconductors and more.
She said the new office will not do research itself but will focus on “setting a vision and coordinating across the Department”.
“DOE has so much equity, so much we’re doing, in critical emerging technology that I think it doesn’t often rise above the fact that we have the word ‘energy’ in our agency’s name ,” she told The Hill in a recent interview.
“The purpose of this office is really to bring all of that together in a clear picture, to work across the programs, to work across the labs, to make sure that we’re all on the same page and also that our leveraging resources. for the good of the nation.”
In addition, Fu is also the department’s chief AI officer at a time when that development has drawn increasing concern from lawyers and the public.
When asked if she sees AI as positive or negative, she noted that the technology can have an impact in both directions.
“AI clearly presents [a] a huge challenge … it also offers great opportunities,” Fu said.
“We have to manage both,” she said, adding that she believes that’s something the Department of Energy can do.
“We’re both an open civilian agency, but we also have a national security mandate, so we’re very comfortable working on both sides of the line.”
AI emerged as an innovation that could become a key tool for scientific calculations, saving time for consumers and a variety of other practical applications.
But concerns have also been raised about whether AI – in which the technology learns to recognize and use patterns – could threaten national security protections and lead to the automation of mail-killing, prompting growing calls for government regulation.
The new office is not expected to be regulatory, Fu said. But she said the DOE could do the scientific work that informs how other agencies regulate.
She said the department is working closely with the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “develop some of the model guardrails for what could be part of the regulation finally.”
It’s hard to say how many AI research projects the DOE is running, Fu said, but it spends a billion dollars a year to fund AI-enabling technology.
What AI can do goes far beyond viral chatbots — with Fu saying the department is looking at “developing physical models that will help us with our big science and nuclear and energy security questions.”
In the energy sector, Fu said, this technology could be used to strengthen the nation’s electrical grid.
“There’s a big question about how we can help enable the adoption of clean energy technologies, and that requires creating smart power grids that optimize energy distribution and management,” she said.
“Looking across the spectrum of risk and opportunity, this is absolutely something that is front and center,” she said, adding that AI could also be applied to licensing, the process of energy projections and allow infrastructure.
In the field of defense, she said, it can be used to detect and prevent the proliferation of weapons.
When asked if it would be used to make more accurate weapons, she didn’t give a straight yes or no answer, saying instead, “For us, it’s about how we speed up timelines for a lot things.”
Fu also touched on additional research being conducted by the department that goes beyond its “Energy” name, including biotechnology, which the administration has said it hopes to use in areas including health, climate change, food security and agriculture.
“I think about the resources we have in our national labs like the Joint Genome Institute and the Agile BioFoundry to develop alternative materials through bio-based mechanisms,” Fu said. “These are the kinds of things that are really going to revolutionize our economy but also the way people live.”
“It’s really for me how we can leverage this collective ability that we have… [to] to get the most out of what we are doing for the general public,” she said.
Fu has worked in multiple roles in the fields of energy, national security and technology, including on security policy research at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She also worked at the US Embassy in Beijing, including as an energy attaché.
She has a background in urban and environmental planning.
“I shouldn’t and didn’t become an expert on these things,” she said. “My expertise is systems thinking, like how do we bring all these different parts of the department together for a bigger whole.”
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