President Trump has appointed top official Jay Clayton of the US intelligence services as his 'AI tsar'. He must report to the White House within 120 days about the dangers, but especially also the opportunities of artificial intelligence.
With the rapid rise of AI, the global call for secure legislation and regulation of the new technology is also growing. Even the bosses of various tech companies have called in recent weeks for oversight and codes of conduct to prevent abuses in the rapid developments.
The dossier became even more urgent due to reports that AI models had started hacking on their own initiative to fulfill their tasks in experiments.
'Nurture, not stifle'
President Trump dismissed those reports as scaremongering, "just as much a fabrication as climate change." He mainly sees the opportunities of AI and warned that if the US hits the brakes, China could overtake the country. "The US rejects any global plan to control AI," he said at the end of last month at the UN General Assembly.
"We will not hinder or stifle the growth of this fantastic industry at all. We will nurture it, help it, and watch over it as it grows," he added in a Truth Social post.
He also announced there that he would appoint someone to closely examine US policy on AI. The choice has now fallen on Clayton, who took office in August as the overarching head of the US intelligence services. He was previously chairman of the stock market watchdog SEC.
Superintelligence
In The Wall Street Journal, Clayton, who will also remain intelligence chief, says the goal is to "remain leaders in the field of superintelligence, and to put the interests of the American people first." "The risks are enormous if we are not the first."
Clayton's working group will be called the Super Intelligence Force, after the alternative name for AI that Trump has decreed. "If we call it 'artificial intelligence', it sounds fake. It is not fake, it is fantastic," Trump explained his reasoning in his UN speech. "That is why the US government - and hopefully the world too - chooses the much more accurate term superintelligence, SI."
Although Trump fixed his decision in a presidential order for the entire US government, the term is not yet widely embraced elsewhere.
Elections
AI also plays an important role in the congressional elections in November, where the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are at stake. The data centers needed for AI are controversial among many voters: they fear high water and electricity costs, loss of farmland, and an environment full of anonymous gray server buildings.
Trump, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic advocate of the data centers. "These large, powerful, and particularly wealthy companies bring great benefits to communities," he said earlier to journalists.
At a campaign event in Ohio yesterday, he again warned the audience: "You can't just shut them down, then they go to China." A reporter from the AP news agency noted that the enthusiastic audience reacted much less enthusiastically to that statement.