President Trump said on Saturday he was launching a new unit focused on artificial intelligence after leading figures in the industry publicly sounded the alarm over the growing technology.
"I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term," Trump said on Truth Social. He added he's also recruiting an AI "czar." The president had appointed investor David Sacks as his AI and crypto czar before the businessman stepped down from that role to become co-chair of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
It is the first time the president has suggested there could be federal oversight of the AI industry.
Trump has been critical of proposals for increased AI regulations and defensive over attacks on the sector. "We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!" Trump said in his post.
Trump's position on AI and data centers contrasts with how many voters feel about the issue heading into the midterms in November. A March Gallup poll showed that nearly half of those surveyed "strongly oppose" the construction of local AI data centers, which are needed to meet the huge power demands required by the industry.
Trump's concerns over voters' views on AI was reflected in his post. He invited his followers to vote in a poll he created for how to title artificial intelligence. "A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI). This is a Poll, and I would appreciate everybody voting!," Trump wrote.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has been among the most prominent voices in AI industry leadership calling for a slowdown in development. In a recent post to his personal blog, Amodei called for the AI industry to pace development of cutting-edge tools, suggesting new measures, including more global coordination among democratic countries and the introduction of third-party safety evaluators.
"I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong," he wrote.
An Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, recently said he was quitting the artificial-intelligence industry over fears that the company and its competitors are racing to build systems they soon won't be able to control.
Anthropic and the Trump administration have clashed for months. Anthropic sued the administration after the Pentagon marked the company as a supply-chain risk, and argued the Department of Defense had illegally retaliated against the company for its standing on artificial-intelligence safety. A federal judge recently ruled in favor of Anthropic and found the administration's actions were unlawful.
Other tech companies have also signaled a need for caution. Microsoft published a provisional code of conduct that it aims to apply when training new AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also warned that the dizzying pace of progress could go "very badly" and that humans could lose "control of the future to AI."
"We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI," Altman said in a post on X. "No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness."
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