Trump unveils his new Super Intelligence Force

As promised, President Donald Trump has announced the formation of a new Super Intelligence Force, which he said will be led by national intelligence director Jay Clayton and other members of his administration.

“The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence, which many say is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and the Internet, and will protect the interests, and improve the lives, of all Americans,” Trump said in a Sunday morning post on his social network Truth Social.

Back in September, in response to an AI safety debate that the president has largely dismissed as a hoax created by “Radical Left Dumocrats,” Trump said he would nevertheless form an AI Force and appoint an AI czar (“Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”).

Since then, Trump signed an executive order seeking to rebrand AI as “super intelligence,” a term seemingly embraced, with some stumbles, by the tech executives who gathered at the White House this week to sign a non-binding safety pledge. (The pledge included an impressive typo.) 

So it’s only natural that Trump’s new task force is named in accordance with this new branding. The Wall Street Journal reports that Clayton will chair the Super Intelligence Force, effectively making him the new AI/SI czar, with Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor serving as vice chairs.

The task force will have reportedly 120 days to create a report on the risks and opportunities presented by AI. Clayton, who previously said that it would be irresponsible for the United States to “back away” from AI while countries like China advance, made similar comments to the WSJ, insisting that one of the biggest risks is “not being first.”

The task force’s charter reportedly says that it will “develop plans for responding to SI-enabled threats to our society, while preventing overregulation and regulatory capture that would stifle innovation and competition.”

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Anthony Ha is TechCrunch’s weekend editor. Previously, he worked as a tech reporter at Adweek, a senior editor at VentureBeat, a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, and vice president of content at a VC firm. He lives in New York City.

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