Biden’s AI order didn’t go far enough to address fairness, but it’s a good first step, advocates say
US Vice President Kamala Harris applauds as US President Joe Biden signs an executive order after delivering remarks on advancing the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 30, 2023.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
After the Biden administration unveiled the first-ever executive order on artificial intelligence on Monday, a frenzy of lawmakers, industry groups, civil rights organizations, labor unions and others began digging into the 111-page document — making note of the priorities, specific deadlines and, in their eyes, the wide-ranging implications of the landmark action.
One core debate centers on a question of AI fairness. Many civil society leaders told CNBC the order does not go far enough to recognize and address real-world harms that stem from AI models — especially those affecting marginalized communities. But they say it’s a meaningful step along the path.
Many civil society and several tech industry groups praised the executive order’s roots — the White House’s blueprint for an AI bill of rights, released last October — but called on Congress to pass laws codifying protections, and to better account for training and developing models that prioritize AI fairness instead of addressing those harms after-the-fact.
“This executive order is a real step forward, but we must not allow it to be the only step,” Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement. “We still need Congress to consider legislation that will regulate AI and ensure that innovation makes us more fair, just, and prosperous, rather than surveilled, silenced, and stereotyped.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrive for an event about their administration’s approach to artificial intelligence in the East Room of the White House on October 30, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, believes the executive order is an “important next step in centering equity, civil rights and civil liberties in our national AI policy” — but that the ACLU has “deep concerns” about the executive order’s sections on national security and law enforcement.
In particular, the ACLU is concerned about the executive order’s push to “identify areas where AI can enhance law enforcement efficiency and accuracy,” as is stated in the text.
“One of the thrusts of the executive order is definitely that ‘AI can improve governmental administration, make our lives better and we don’t want to stand in way of innovation,'” Venzke told CNBC.
“Some of that stands at risk to lose a fundamental question, which is, ‘Should we be deploying artificial intelligence or algorithmic systems for a particular governmental service at all?’ And if we do, it really needs to be preceded by robust audits for discrimination and to ensure that the algorithm is safe and effective, that it accomplishes what it’s meant to do.”
Margaret Mitchell, researcher and chief ethics scientist of AI startup Hugging Face said she agreed with the values the executive order puts forth — privacy, safety, security, trust, equity and justice — but is concerned about the lack of focus on ways to train and develop models to minimize future harms, before an AI system is deployed.
“There was a call for an overall focus on applying red-teaming, but not other more critical approaches to evaluation,” Mitchell said.
“‘Red-teaming’ is a post-hoc, hindsight approach to evaluation that works a bit like whack-a-mole: Now that the model is finished training, what can you think of that might be a problem? See if it’s a problem and fix it if so.”
Mitchell wished she had seen “foresight” approaches highlighted in the executive order, such as disaggregated evaluation approaches, which can analyze a model as data is scaled up.
Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder and president of the Algorithmic Justice League, said Tuesday at an event in New York that she felt the executive order fell short in terms of the notion of redress, or penalties when AI systems harm marginalized or vulnerable communities.
Even experts who praised the executive order’s scope believe the work will be incomplete without action from Congress.
“The President is trying to extract extra mileage from the laws that he has,” said Divyansh Kaushik, associate director for emerging technologies and national security at the Federation of American Scientists.
For example, it seeks to work within existing immigration law to make it easier to retain high-skilled AI workers in the U.S. But immigration law has not been updated in decades, said Kaushik, who was involved in collaborative efforts with the administration in crafting elements of the order.
It falls on Congress, he added, to increase the number of employment-based green cards awarded each year and avoid losing talent to other countries.
Industry worries about stifling innovation
On the other side, industry leaders expressed wariness or even stronger feelings that the order had gone too far and would stifle innovation in a nascent sector.
Andrew Ng, longtime AI leader and cofounder of Google Brain and Coursera, told CNBC he is “quite concerned about the reporting requirements for models over a certain size,” adding that he is “very worried about overhyped dangers of AI leading to reporting and licensing requirements that crush open source and stifle innovation.”
In Ng’s view, thoughtful AI regulation can help advance the field, but over-regulation of aspects of the technology, such as AI model size, could hurt the open-source community, which would in turn likely benefit tech giants.
Vice President Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden depart after delivering remarks on advancing the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 30, 2023.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Nathan Benaich, founder and general partner of Air Street Capital, also had concerns about the reporting requirements for large AI models, telling CNBC that the compute threshold and stipulations mentioned in the order are a “flawed and potentially distorting measure.”
“It tells us little about safety and risks discouraging emerging players from building large models, while entrenching the power of incumbents,” Benaich told CNBC.
NetChoice’s Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo was even more blunt.
“Broad regulatory measures in Biden’s AI red tape wishlist will result in stifling new companies and competitors from entering the marketplace and significantly expanding the power of the federal government over American innovation,” said Szabo, whose group counts Amazon, Google, Meta and TikTok among its members. “Thus, this order puts any investment in AI at risk of being shut down at the whims of government bureaucrats.”
But Reggie Townsend, a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which advises President Biden, told CNBC that he feels the order doesn’t stifle innovation.
“If anything, I see it as an opportunity to create more innovation with a set of expectations in mind,” said Townsend.
David Polgar, founder of the nonprofit All Tech Is Human and a member of TikTok’s content advisory council, had similar takeaways: In part, he said, it’s about speeding up responsible AI work instead of slowing technology down.
“What a lot of the community is arguing for — and what I take away from this executive order — is that there’s a third option,” Polgar told CNBC. “It’s not about either slowing down innovation or letting it be unencumbered and potentially risky.”
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People walk past a PCCW sign in Hong Kong.
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Regulators in the U.S. have moved to block one of Hong Kong’s largest telecommunications companies from accessing domestic networks, citing national security concerns.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced on Wednesday that it had initiated proceedings to potentially bar HKT Trust and HKT Ltd and its subsidiaries from interconnecting with American networks, escalating concerns over its ties to China.
The government agency asked HKT, which is a subsidiary of information and communication technology giant PCCW, to justify why its authorizations should not be revoked. HKT’s current hold permits allowing direct exchange of calls and data with U.S. carriers.
China Unicom, which owns about 18.4% of PCCW, lost its own U.S. network access in 2022 due to similar concerns.
“The FCC’s action on HKT today is an appropriate step towards ensuring the safety and integrity of our communications networks,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement.
“The FCC will continue to safeguard America’s networks against penetration from foreign adversaries, like China.“
The Hong Kong-listed shares of HKT fell more than 5%, while PCCW fell 3.6% in Thursday trading.
Share price of HKT and PCCW
According to their 2024 annual reports, HKT and PCCW derived about 13% of their 2024 revenues from regions outside greater China and Singapore, though specific countries weren’t detailed. HKT made up about 90% of the group’s total revenue.
Neither PCCW nor HKT immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Under the leadership of Carr, the FCC has expanded efforts to expel Chinese state-linked entities, including China Telecom, Pacific Networks and ComNet, from U.S. markets.
On Friday, the FCC announced that the major U.S. online retail websites had removed millions of listings for banned Chinese electronics as part of its broader China crackdown.
Caught in U.S.-China trade tensions
PCCW is majority-owned by Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li, son of billionaire Li Ka-shing, who has increasingly found his businesses caught in the crossfire of the U.S.-China trade tensions.
FWD Group, owned by Li’s Pacific Century Group, recently faced hurdles expanding into mainland China amid backlash from regulators in China, Bloomberg reported in July.
In March, Beijing reportedly instructed state-owned firms to pause new deals with businesses linked to Li Ka-shing and his family after their conglomerate CK Hutchison agreed to transfer stakes in over 40 global ports — including two in Panama — to a BlackRock-led consortium.
The ports deal stalled after Beijing objected to the exclusion of Chinese investors, with CK Hutchison indicating it no longer plans to comeplete the transaction in 2025.
The FCC’s latest move against HKT also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump escalates his trade war with China.
Liquid cooled servers in an installation at the Global Switch Docklands data centre campus in London, UK, on Monday, June 16, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Europe’s ambitious artificial intelligence strategy is at risk of colliding with an often overlooked but critically important environmental issue: water scarcity.
The European Union has big plans for data center expansion, announcing in April that it intends to at least triple its capacity over the next five to seven years as part of a push to become a world-class AI hub.
The rapid rollout of data centers, which power all aspects of the digital economy, from social media and online banking to AI tools like ChatGPT, has sparked some concern — particularly in regions already facing water scarcity.
The issue is especially acute across southern Europe, with around 30% of the population known to be situated in areas with permanent water stress. This refers to a situation where the demand for water exceeds the available supply during a specific period.
Data centers typically require large quantities of water to keep them from overheating.
Major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have invested billions of U.S. dollars in new facilities in Spain, for instance, while Google has plans to develop three hubs in Greece’s Attica region.
Kevin Grecksch, associate professor of water science, policy and management at the U.K.’s University of Oxford, told CNBC that plans to build data centers in water-stressed areas across Europe reflects a lack of integrated thinking from policymakers.
“AI is a buzzword and the talk of the town,” Grecksch said. “So, national and regional politicians try to get their hands on it, and it sounds as if you’re investing into the future, creating a few new jobs — but sustainability seems to be an afterthought.”
Grecksch said the rapid rollout of data centers across the region throws up plenty of unanswered questions, such as, given that in most jurisdictions public water supply has priority over everything else, what happens if data centers are shut down in a drought scenario? He conceded he had no answer to this prospect.
“Data centres tend to be built in arid or semi-arid climates because that’s the preferred environment for servers; yet those areas tend to be subject to water scarcity or drought prone as well,” Grecksch said.
A spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said policies of the European High Performance Computing Joint Initiative (EuroHPC JU) include selecting hosting sites for AI factories based on criteria that prioritizes energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.
“Green computing will continue to be pursued through energy-efficient supercomputers optimised for AI, using techniques such as dynamic power saving and re-use techniques like advanced cooling and recycling of the heat produced,” the spokesperson told CNBC by email.
The EU referenced the new “JUPITER” supercomputer in Jülich, Germany, as “a prime example of European excellence” in addressing energy efficiency, saying the system runs entirely on renewable energy and features “cutting-edge” cooling and energy reuse.
Data centers’ water footprint
In Aragon, an area of severe water stress in northeastern Spain, Amazon is planning to open three data centers. The proposal, which the U.S. tech giant says will create thousands of jobs, has sparked tension between local farmers and environmental activists.
In the U.K., the small English village of Culham has been picked as the first of the British government’s so-called AI “growth zones.” The designation of the Oxfordshire site, which is situated close to one of the country’s first new reservoirs in 30 years, has raised fears that it could put further pressure on local water supplies.
Nick Kraft, senior analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said “extremely arid” and high-water stress localities were being targeted across Europe for further data center development.
“Complicating the matter is the fact that the most common understanding of data center water usage, and typically what companies report on when communicating with local stakeholders, is on-site water use — or the water used for cooling in data centers,” Kraft told CNBC by email.
This photograph taken on August 24, 2025 shows a general view of the Mediano reservoir, in the northeastern region of Aragon, Huesca province.
Ander Gillenea | Afp | Getty Images
“This despite more than half of data centers’ water footprint being off-site, occurring in energy generation and semiconductor manufacturing,” he added.
There are emerging signs that data center operators are maturing in their water stewardship, Kraft said, but assessing the full water footprint of these projects is expected to remain a major challenge.
Analysis published by S&P Global last month said the data center industry’s average exposure to water stress is projected to be high in the 2020s, with southern European countries such as Spain and Greece among the locations forecast to face the most water stress.
Data centers power the digital economy
Michael Winterson, secretary general of the European Data Centre Association (EUDCA), which represents the interests of the European data center operator community, said water consumption is a concern that the industry takes seriously.
“Water treatment and collection is now normal for us. And there are continual innovations in this space that reduce energy required, reduce water needed and are fast approaching near zero chemical treatment,” Winterson told CNBC.
The “next big thing” the EUDC wants to do in Europe, Winterson said, noting that the region typically lags the U.S. in this space, is to get non-potable water feeds, referring to water that is not safe for drinking but can be used for other industrial processes.
“This reduces chemicals and energy used to get water and keeps potable water for its primary purpose,” he added.
For their part, many data center operators, claim that it is the energy-intensive nature of their technology that pushes them to consider sustainable innovations. Companies often use water usage effectiveness (WUE) as a metric for identifying water efficiency in data centers, however the metric poses its own limitations.
Microsoft has been trialing data center designs that it says consumes zero water for cooling and Start Campus said it’s Sines facility in Portugal achieves a WUE of zero by recycling seawater through its sytems.
An operator works at the data centre of French company OVHcloud in Roubaix, northern France on April 3, 2025.
Sameer Al-doumy | Afp | Getty Images
The EUDC’s secretary general also sought to highlight the importance of data centers to the region’s digital economy.
“This is trillions of dollars of GDP and millions of technology jobs in Europe alone — which in average pay significantly higher salaries than national average wages. A 20 [megawatt] Datacentre uses the similar amount of water as a golf course! How much GDP do golf courses create? What kind of jobs?” Winterson said.
A deepening water crisis
European lawmakers have previously warned about the region’s growing water crisis, saying there is a pressing need to tackle issues such as scarcity, food security and pollution at a time when Europe is the fastest-warming continent on the planet.
The European Environment Agency, for its part, said late last month that the region’s water resources are currently under “severe pressure,” with water stress affecting one-third of Europe’s population and territory.
When factoring in the explosion of AI demand, Laura Ramsamy, climate and hazard lead at data analytics platform Climate X, said the rollout of new hyperscale data centers in already water-stressed European areas “is really exacerbating the problem.”
In the Netherlands in 2022, for instance, Meta paused its plans to build a large data center in the region of Zeewolde amid objections over environmental concerns, particularly high power and water consumption.
Ireland, which has long embraced the rollout of data centers to facilitate an AI boom, also recently came under scrutiny from environmental groups, with many of these hubs concentrated in the Dublin area.
Notably, the Netherlands and Ireland have both imposed effective bans on new data centers over the coming years due to concerns over grid capacity and their environmental impact.
A spokesperson of Ireland’s Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment said the construction and operation of data centers have “positively contributed” to the Irish economy over the past decade.
“As with all sectors of our economy, the operation and development of data centres are underpinned by Ireland’s legally binding climate objectives and the need to maintain robust energy security,” the spokesperson said.
“It is understood that the largest data centres in Ireland primarily operate air cooling rather than water cooling systems. This differentiates Ireland from many global data centre locations,” they added.
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