Trump Seeks New Czar to Lead ‘AI Force’

President Donald Trump says will name a new artificial intelligence czar to head an agency similar to his Space Force.

“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” he wrote Saturday in a post on his Truth Social platform. “AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP.”

Trump rejected the safety concerns related to the technology that the industry’s leaders have spent the last month cautioning against.

Companies including Google, OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic have all admitted to instances in which their AI agents hacked into other companies, while Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has called for a slowing of AI development efforts.

The president said an announcement of the new head of this “AI Force” would happen soon. Trump had early in this term named David Sacks to serve as the White House’s combination AI and cryptocurrency czar. Sacks has since stepped down but still serves as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

PYMNTS wrote last week about Amodei’s call for an industry slowdown, something that has been endorsed by the likes of Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has argued that the labs already have the money and insight to govern their models, and that rules composed in a hurry would benefit the frontrunners.

“A slowdown that doesn’t cost the leaders anything commercially is a slowdown that costs someone else something, and maybe even a lot,” she wrote.

“Imagine being well ahead in a race and proposing that everyone reduce their speed. You’re agreeing to slow down, too. You’re also keeping the advantage you accumulated before the new rules took effect. And you’re getting more time to turn a technical lead into customer relationships and recurring revenue.”

Meanwhile, Chris Selland, a lecturer in entrepreneurship and innovation, told PYMNTS he expects the pace of AI development to moderate on its own.

“It only makes economic sense for the model providers to push the frontier at the pace at which the market can absorb it,” he said.

Selland added that he is also skeptical of the concern around recursive self-improvement, the point where AI models begin improving and engineering themselves with no human involvement, calling it “a significant amount of hyperbole.”

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.