The President announced Friday that he will meet with leaders of major AI companies next week to discuss a $1 trillion federal investment in their sector—a decision apparently reached after a forty-minute conversation with his phone’s voice assistant about quarterly earnings.
Sources close to the administration confirm that the proposal emerged during a Mar-a-Lago lunch where the President mistook a demonstration of GPT-4’s capabilities for a pitch to replace the entire Treasury Department. When aides explained that AI companies were not, in fact, offering to manage the national debt, he decided the next best thing was to simply hand them a trillion dollars and see what happens.
The meeting will reportedly cover how to “make AI great again,” a phrase the President believes is both original and strategically sound. Tech executives have already begun preparing talking points, though most acknowledge they have no idea what metrics will be used to measure success, or whether the trillion dollars will arrive as a check, cryptocurrency, or a handwritten IOU signed in gold ink.
Economists are divided on whether government-directed venture capital has ever worked, though most agree it has historically produced either monopolies or expensive paperweights. One analyst noted that this approach combines the worst aspects of industrial policy with the unpredictability of letting someone who still uses Internet Explorer design the future of American technology.
The meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, assuming the President does not get distracted by a shiny object or accidentally declare war on Canada.