US to spend $5 billion on health, construction research powered by AI

Ah, the Trump administration's $5 billion Genesis Mission is back in the headlines, and this time it's got a fresh coat of 'solving scientific problems' paint. Remember when we noted this was the same $5 billion that the NIH was supposed to use for biomedical breakthroughs? Well, now it's for 'health and construction research,' because nothing says scientific rigour like lumping cancer cures in with better building materials. The administration has also decided to shift research funding from universities to individual scientists, which is a masterstroke — why let institutions with decades of expertise distribute money when you can hand it directly to hand-picked geniuses who definitely won't be chosen based on political loyalty?

The $5 billion itself is a drop in the bucket compared to what private labs spend, but it's enough to create a lovely patronage system. Universities, already reeling from cuts, will now watch their grants evaporate while 'individual scientists' — presumably those who've written the right op-eds — get to play with AI models on the government's dime. It's the perfect recipe for accelerating AI capabilities: take the peer review out of peer-reviewed research and replace it with a direct line to Mar-a-Lago. What could possibly go wrong?

And let's not forget the 'construction' angle. Because everyone knows AI's greatest challenge isn't alignment or safety — it's figuring out how to pour concrete more efficiently. The Trump administration has solved the problem of AI risk by redirecting it toward making buildings slightly cheaper, while simultaneously ensuring that any inconvenient research about actual AI dangers gets defunded. Beautiful. Someone give the architect of this plan a medal — preferably one made of AI-generated concrete.