Trump names his new AI task force the "Super Intelligence Force"

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Meghan McCarty Carino (1:05)

Super Intelligence Force assemble from American Public Media. This is Marketplace Tech. I'm Meghan McCarty Carino.

President Donald Trump named a new superhero sounding AI Task Force this week. We'll get into it on today's Marketplace Tech Bytes Week in Review. Plus, white Democrats in the Senate blocked a bill to address data center energy costs ahead of the midterms. And a new poll shows Americans not feeling too great about how our leaders in government are dealing with the risks from AI.

But first, back to the Super Intelligence Force. It's led by Jay Clayton, the new AI czar, also Director of National Intelligence. Here with more on what this Task Force will be doing is Cristiano Lima-Strong. He's a senior AI and government reporter at Bloomberg Government.

Cristiano Lima-Strong (2:06)

This is part of the president's very public attempt to kind of re-brand AI as it's having a lot of public image issues, I think is fair to say. But this is the group that's going to really lead the administration's response, which the president has really emphasized, and particularly after that meeting with the tech executives that produce that accord, going to focus around this idea of self-regulation and talking to the companies around self-policing and this idea that the US needs to maintain its leadership in this space because the administration very much views it as a national security risk if the US falls behind China in terms of developing the technology.

Meghan McCarty Carino (2:47)

This force will have 120 days to sort of come up with a report with recommendations. I mean, what is the nature of this report that they're tasked with?

Cristiano Lima-Strong (2:57)

Yeah, I mean, to be seen, we know it's going to touch on potential recommendations, likely some for the sector, but also how the government can engage with the sector. I mean, some of the lead officials have talked about, you know, we want to be fostering this technology, but we want to be doing so responsibly. And so you're probably going to see them offer up ideas on how to best structure that. There's four lead officials that are taking point on this. One being Clayton, the Director of National Intelligence. There's the top official from the Federal Trade Commission, which leads a lot of the consumer protection issues on this for the Federal Government. So that's likely to be a piece of it. There's Emil Michael from the Department of War. The Defense Department has really been leaning into the use of AI internally.

And so I'm sure that Defense, National Security, that's going to be a portion.

And then the last official is Scott Cooper, who's the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, which handles a lot of like, who is doing what in the administration. And so that will likely also factor into an approach of like the roles in the federal government and how the government itself is integrating some of this technology.

Meghan McCarty Carino (4:15)

And you reported that a number of these members have ties to industry, not necessarily as technologists, but largely on the money side of the AI build out. What kind of potential conflicts might come up?

Cristiano Lima-Strong (4:29)

Yeah, so three of those four leads that I just mentioned have some connection to the AI sector. Clayton, one of his old firms, invested pretty heavily in data centers. And he's represented clients as a lawyer in the past, including SoftBank, which is a big conglomerate in the space. Emil Michael, the Undersecretary of War, he's a former tech executive. He worked at Uber, not an AI giant per se, but he also was a decently significant investor in AI. And he had to divest from a number of his holdings to take on his position in the administration.