“When everyone’s super… no one will be.” This is unlikely what Jay Clayton, the Director of National Intelligence and newly anointed AI Czar, said to President Trump to encourage him to sign the Executive Order called: Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence. Instead, that line came from the tech-wielding supervillain in the 2004 Pixar film The Incredibles. It is about how the supervillain turned bad because his dreams of being a superhero sidekick were crushed as a little boy. I will explain how Czar Clayton’s dreams of being super are coming true in the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
The following news is super fun:
- FDA published a 50-page draft guidance document with pre-market submission recommendations for robotically-assisted surgical devices, including example submissions. Comments are due Nov. 24 here.
- A group of attorneys general urged Congress to regulate the AI industry without preempting state law, including through mandatory federal oversight of safety and testing standards, uniform incident response, international cooperation to pace AI development, and safeguards for market competition.
- Hospitals’ increased use of AI-enabled coding contributed to an estimated $942 million in additional costs for Blue Cross Blue Shield plans between 2023 and 2025, without corresponding increases in care delivered, according to a BCBSA claims analysis. This is a follow-up to its March report finding that AI increased costs in a subset of plans.
“I’ll give them heroics. I’ll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone’s ever seen! And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super!” This is what supervillain “Syndrome” says in the movie The Incredibles, who only became a villain after Mr. Incredible bluntly rejected his weirdly-enthusiastic help. Syndrome was a tech genius who created “Omniroids” — advanced, deadly AI-controlled robots — designed to kill superheroes in staged battles, after which he would swoop in to “save the day” and earn the admiration he was once denied. In contrast to poor Syndrome’s lonely villainy, it seems that former SEC Chair and former Sullivan & Cromwell partner AI Czar Jay Clayton is leading a big, enthusiastic group of important people with a chance to make everything super. And so quickly! According to President Trump’s announcement of the “Super Intelligence Force,” Czar Clayton has 120 days to explain how to “ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence” and “protect the interests and improve the lives” of Americans. After re-branding “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence” in an Executive Order and getting top executives of AI companies to sign a voluntary accord that would effectively self-police the development of AI technology, it is now up to Czar Clayton to make everything super. Oh, and coordinate the government’s engagement with consumers, public interest groups, religious organizations, infrastructure providers and AI companies about super intelligent things. How super is that?! Without the villainy icky parts, I can imagine Czar Clayton saying something like what Syndrome says in the Incredibles movie: “Oh, come on! You gotta admit, this is cool! Just like a movie: the [AI-controlled] robot will emerge dramatically, do some damage, throngs of screaming people. And just when all hope is lost? Syndrome [Czar Clayton] will save the day!”
