WASHINGTON (TNND) — A White House task force will take the lead on developing the federal government’s response to the rapidly growing capabilities of artificial intelligence as industry executives ramp up warnings about the risks their products are creating.
Pressure is mounting for the government to get directly involved in shaping the future of the industry as its models become more capable and increasingly autonomous, leading to questions about whether developers will be able to keep AI under human control.
President Donald Trump announced the formation of the task force on Sunday and named National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton to lead it. The group will “coordinate the federal government’s engagement” with critical infrastructure organizations, AI firms and other groups. It will have 120 days to prepare a report on what the government’s role should be in addressing the risks and opportunities AI poses.
“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 wrote on Truth Social.
Trump has been adamantly opposed to putting regulations on the industry and argued that beating China to develop the most advanced tools should take priority. However, the White House is also trying to figure out how to get out ahead of the potential risks that come with AI as frontier labs disclose more autonomous breaches of outside systems and reports of models acting beyond their instructions.
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After last week’s meeting with AI executives, Trump argued that the industry was capable of policing itself and the voluntary framework they agreed to would be sufficient to minimize its risks. The White House also created a government review process for frontier AI models in July but made participation in it voluntary for developers.
The task force is one of the most significant steps the White House has taken so far in response to mounting calls from within the industry and among researchers to coordinate a governmental response to the technology’s advancing capabilities.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the administration has “resisted meaningful safeguards without offering a serious alternative” and raised questions about what role the task force will serve.
“We still do not know what authority this new role will have, whether it will include developing safety standards or reviewing the most advanced models, or how it fits into the administration’s broader approach to AI. That lack of clarity is especially concerning as leading AI companies themselves are confronting increasingly capable systems that can evade safeguards and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” Warner said in a statement.
Those concerns have become more urgent as companies keep disclosing instances of models escaping testing scenarios and exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Several U.S. government websites like the Department of Education and Securities and Exchange Commission, along with the Australian Medicare system, the United Nations and university databases have been targeted in AI-driven breaches of systems, sounding off alarms about the cybersecurity risks that are becoming more challenging to confront.
The creation of the task force comes after Trump met with many of the industry’s top executives at the White House, several of whom have offered existential warnings about the risk their products could soon pose. They emerged from the meeting with a voluntary agreement to adopt AI safety policies like conducting risk reviews, having models evaluated by third parties and implementing internal controls to monitor whether models are hacking or acting in unintended ways.
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Advocates for tougher government oversight of the industry have argued that voluntary agreements are not enough to ensure companies act in the public interest as they face intense competition between each other and with China to create the most cutting-edge models. They have pointed to a lengthening list of incidents where governments have struggled to respond to a rapidly advancing technology that has already targeted their systems.
In the administration’s view, leading AI companies already have enough incentive not to create a product that will unleash widespread damage on the world.
“Nobody's going to get a free pass here. The question, though, is do you want to make sure you don't introduce a regulatory scheme that will slow down or impact the ability of the inventiveness of this country to win in what is an incredibly important technology,” Kupor said during a Monday appearance on Fox Business.
Other members of the task force include Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson, director of Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor and Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer. The task force will report to the president and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
The government is also trying to figure out how to deal with Americans’ concerns about resource usage from the data centers that power AI. Backlash to data centers has grown in recent months as companies invest massive sums into a rapid build-out, drawing bipartisan pushback across the U.S. over concerns of higher electricity bills, water usage and noise.
Kupor said on Monday that the task force will seek to figure out how to balance those issues with the administration’s desire to let the industry continue to develop.
“We have to figure out, you know, energy costs, water costs, utilities, all these other things. Security, of course, and so the main thing for the task force to do will be to come back to the president with a comprehensive plan that balances those two issues and make sure that we have the preconditions that will allow the U.S. to continue to win,” he said.
