Jay Clayton thinks super intelligence is a national security issue. Clayton runs the office that spies on other countries and reads reports about nuclear codes and terrorist plots. Now he's concerned about math getting too good at pattern recognition.
Trump floated Clayton as AI czar this week. Clayton dodged the question. A man who already has one of the most powerful intelligence jobs in the country doesn't want a second job babysitting chatbots. Makes sense. Why would anyone want to regulate the thing venture capitalists insist will either cure cancer or extinction-event humanity by next Tuesday?
The director of national intelligence calling AI a security threat means one of two things. Either foreign governments are building robot armies faster than we thought, or Clayton sat through one PowerPoint from a defense contractor and got spooked by a slide that showed a computer beating him at chess.
Retail traders heard this news and immediately started buying semiconductor stocks. They think national security concerns mean the government will print money for chips. They're not wrong. They're just late. The smart money bought NVIDIA two years ago when it was still a graphics card company. Now these geniuses are piling in after a 900% run because a guy in a suit said the words "super intelligence" into a microphone.
Clayton won't be AI czar. He's too busy. But some other person will take the job, hold three meetings, issue one framework document that says "innovation balanced with safety," and cash a seven-figure consulting check the moment they leave office. The AI will keep doing whatever it does. The stock will keep going up or down based on nothing. And you'll still lose money trying to time the top.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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