On October 16, ORF America hosted the fifth Chips for Breakfast, a private roundtable to facilitate frank conversations among a select group of U.S. and foreign government officials, industry representatives, and policy experts about the current state of U.S. semiconductor policy,  technology leadership, and collaboration with like-minded partners.

With numerous companies seeking to develop, train, and operationalize large language models and other applied AI uses, the workhorses of artificial intelligence - particularly advanced graphics processing units and advanced compute hyperscalers - are crucial. Yet the bottleneck of data centers and ultimately, hardware, remains a key limitation for AI researchers and the private sector, as parallel processing remains essential. At the same time, the United States and its partners and allies are also wrestling with regulatory and governance considerations on a host of issues tied to AI. Differences in preferred regulatory approaches are starting to become more salient, but are not yet institutionalized.

Against the backdrop of more than two years since the passage of the CHIPS & Science Act, this meeting focused on advanced compute and artificial intelligence. It sought to address key questions along three lines of inquiry. First, what is the current landscape in the United States for advanced compute and applied artificial intelligence research? Second, it analyzed whether there are crucial breakthroughs or challenges in AI that are expected to change the status quo? Third, it assessed how hardware specific issues affect regulatory concerns emerging at the national and multilateral levels. The discussion also assessed differences in sovereign versus private sector advanced compute capacity and the hurdles facing smaller states and middle powers in their efforts to formulate AI-related policies.