IT Home reported on October 8 that according to Bloomberg's report this morning (the 8th), US Director of National Intelligence and new "White House AI Czar" Jay Clayton has taken on another role: leading what Trump calls the "superintelligence task force." The first stop after taking the new post is Silicon Valley, where he will meet with several heavyweight executives from the AI industry.
According to people familiar with the matter, on this trip Clayton will meet withNVIDIA's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Meta's Mark Zuckerbergand other CEOs.
This is also Clayton's first meeting with tech industry executives since taking over the new task force responsible for coordinating the federal government's AI affairs.
Just last week, many of these executives attended a White House luncheon alongside Clayton, at which Trump and several AI companies signed a voluntary safety agreement. A few days later, Trump announced on Truth Social that Clayton would head the task force, reporting to him personally and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Following a series of safety incidents caused by runaway models, public concern about catastrophic AI risks has continued to rise, and it has become increasingly difficult for the US government to ignore it. Last month, Trump announced he would appoint a new AI affairs lead.
Clayton said that companies driving AI development will also take public safety into account while continuing to develop the technology. "Models must have a set ofcontrol and monitoring mechanismsthat are acceptable not only to developers and companies, but also to the American people. We will demand that the entire industry deliver on this commitment."
According to IT Home, Clayton became US Director of National Intelligence this summer and previously served as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Before taking over AI affairs, the prosecutor's office he led had handled several major tech cases.
Clayton is no stranger to Wall Street. During Trump's first presidential term, he served as Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, later became Chairman of Apollo Global Management, and joined the American Express board of directors. He resigned from both positions upon becoming US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
During his Silicon Valley trip, Clayton also met on the 7th local time with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora of the cybersecurity company. The two then gave a joint interview to CNBC to discuss AI safety issues. Clayton defended the Trump administration's approach of relying on existing liability laws to hold the AI industry in check, arguing that existing laws will become an important means of holding companies accountable. "If you want to survive, you have to follow the rules."