On Saturday, the U.S. president devoted part of his day to a Truth Social poll asking followers whether artificial intelligence should be renamed Superior Intelligence, Extreme Intelligence or Supreme Intelligence. Before the posting spree ended, he had also unveiled a Space Force-style organization for the technology and dismissed the entire AI safety conversation as a Democratic hoax.
That is a considerable amount of policy for a single afternoon of posts. Not one item arrived with specifics.
The rebrand comes first
The name came first. “Many people think that the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are inaccurate, and very ineloquent, relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence,” Trump wrote, before offering the three alternatives for a vote. As of publication, the poll remained open.
Within a couple of hours, the mood changed. Trump declared that efforts toward “the decimation, or destruction, of AI” belong on a list of “many” Democratic hoaxes — a list he said includes “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, Men in Women’s Sports, [and] Transgender for Everyone.” AI safety concerns, as he described them, were “generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country.”
Data centers, then AI
Trump described a progression. The supposed hoax, in his words, “began with an attack on our Data Centers, until people realized how wealthy and prestigious they were for the Communities in which they were built.” With “the crazed Data Center attack” having “largely failed,” he said, opponents are now “going straight at AI.” He added that he “will not stand by and let this happen.”
No evidence accompanied the claim that skepticism toward AI and data centers is anything but genuine and grassroots. Nor does the record fall neatly along partisan lines: Republicans as well as Democrats have criticized data centers, and New York recently became the first state to pause permits for large projects.
The post is consistent with remarks Trump made at a golf tournament the previous weekend, when he said he was open to “guardrails” while contending, “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up.”
An AI Force with no job description
The closest thing to a concrete commitment came at the end. Trump said he will “cherish [the AI industry,] help it, and watch over it, as it grows,” and that he is creating an AI Force modeled on the Space Force he set up during his first term.
He further said an AI “Czar” would be announced “in the near future,” noting that “Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”
He did not explain what the AI Force would actually do or what the czar’s responsibilities would be. The most recent holder of a comparable role, venture capitalist David Sacks, left his post as Trump’s AI and crypto czar earlier this year to become co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Why the timing isn’t an accident
The safety debate Trump is brushing aside intensified recently after an AI researcher said he was leaving Anthropic because the top AI companies “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade” and are “gambling with our lives.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei subsequently published a plan to “pace the frontier,” one that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared to back.
That framing has its own detractors. Some critics of the AI industry argue that a good deal of the existential-risk rhetoric serves to divert attention from AI’s more immediate harms.
The industry’s most prominent figure has already fallen in behind the president. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took a phone call from Trump on stage at the All-In Summit, an event Sacks co-hosts, concurred that the AI backlash is a “hoax” and said “we’re not going to let” a slowdown occur. Meanwhile, the vote on what to name the technology both men are defending is still running.