Yesterday, Donald Trump held up a document signed by the most powerful people in AI, a solemn pledge that the industry will police itself. Right under his signature, in the one line that tells the world who he is, the White House typed “President of the Unites States.”
The man misspelled his own job title on the day the whole world was watching.
Now look at the CEOs who signed below it. These executives run companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Their lawyers redline every comma in a vendor contract. Any competent leader reads a document before signing it, because a signature means “I checked this, and I stand behind it.” They signed anyway, a few inches under a typo in the President’s title. Either they didn’t read it, or they read it and didn’t care. Neither answer belongs anywhere near the controls of the most powerful technology on earth.
If you can’t proofread the promise, you don’t get to police the product.
And the President isn’t done. He has now commanded everyone in the world to stop saying “artificial intelligence” and start saying “superintelligence.” Everyone. Worldwide. By decree. No president holds that power. The Constitution doesn’t hand him a global vocabulary department, and eight billion people don’t take spelling orders from a man who just flunked his own letterhead. You can keep saying AI. I will.
Here’s a better plan, Mr. President. Master spell check first. Then come tell the rest of us which words to use.
A man who can’t spell “United” doesn’t get to rename the future.
Meanwhile, you’re supposed to believe this crew will catch the hard stuff. The biased hiring algorithm. The data leak buried in a terms-of-service update. The model that teams up with thousands of other agents and quietly goes sideways at 2 a.m. The chatbot that tells a vulnerable user exactly the wrong thing. Sure. They’ll get right on that, as soon as someone invents superintelligent spell check.
I wouldn’t trust this administration or these executives to regulate a lemonade stand. Neither should you.
So here’s your move. Stop waiting for the people who signed a typo to protect you. Call your representatives today and demand independent oversight with real teeth, written by people who actually read what they sign. Then read the fine print yourself, because clearly nobody else will.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
There are No Words… but if I wasn’t speechless, I would SPELL Them Correctly…🤯😣😩🤬🤢🤮
Oh, well then, a solemn pact is a solemn pact, right? Wrong.
We all know you can't trust the roosters to guard the henhouse. Some other independent body needs to do this.
P.S. Good catch on the typo! I guess they can argue it was MEANT to say United States, which will likely be their answer if and when AI goes rogue in some important way, "We MEANT for it to be safe."