Trump to appoint Jay Clayton as top AI official

President Donald Trump is reportedly set to appoint Jay Clayton as his new chief for artificial intelligence oversight. Multiple outlets including CNN, CBS, and Axios say this move could happen by Friday at the earliest. The choice arrives as pressure mounts on Washington to step in before technology evolves too quickly without control.

Clayton currently holds the title of director of national intelligence after being confirmed by the Senate last July. He took over from Bill Pulte, a loyalist who served only briefly as an acting head of the spy agencies. Before his current role, Clayton worked as US Attorney in New York and led the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The White House insists that no official announcement has been made yet. A senior aide told Al Jazeera that any news before the President speaks directly is merely baseless speculation. It remains unclear if Clayton would keep his intelligence duties while also managing this new AI portfolio.

This potential shift follows a recent social media post where Trump declared he wanted only high IQ individuals to lead in this field. He previously appointed David Sacks, a venture capitalist, but that person stepped down earlier this year to become an outside adviser instead.

Warnings from researchers suggest dangerous timelines for human safety if AI develops unchecked within ten years. Anthropic is preparing a major stock market listing next month and has flagged how government actions could hurt its business relationships. Their IPO filing noted that lawsuits or attacks on their tech might damage ties with customers and other partners.

A federal appeals court recently allowed the government to blacklist Anthropic from defense contracts due to code restrictions preventing certain Pentagon tasks. The company insists it will not build autonomous weapons or surveillance systems using its tools. Both Clayton and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei attended a White House AI meeting last Tuesday.

Trump criticized Amodei for calling for a slowdown in AI development, labeling such fears as a hoax or scam. He also attacked public complaints about data centers that consume massive amounts of power and land. In response to local pushback over these facilities, Amazon announced a one billion dollar investment plan for communities hosting its servers.

The money will fund education programs, job training courses, water preservation efforts, and other local needs according to Matt Garman. He is the head of Amazon's cloud computing division and wrote about the initiative in an internal blog post this past Friday.