Amid calls from the tech industry and the public for new safeguards related to artificial intelligence, Donald Trump made his position clear last week: The president intends to do nothing except hope for the best. In fact, the Republican went so far as to repeatedly insist that concerns about AI are, as far as he’s concerned, little more than a “hoax.”

In the days that followed, White House officials toed the line, publicly insisting that industry leaders calling for guardrails should be ignored, and that AI companies should be left to figure things out on their own.

As last week came to an end, Trump shifted his focus away from the potential threats posed by AI and toward proper branding for AI. “Many people think that the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are inaccurate, and very ineloquent, relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence,” the president wrote on his social media platform. “A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI).”

The fact that Trump appeared more interested in what to call AI than how to respond to potential AI threats was absurd, though he managed to make matters noticeably worse soon after.

On Saturday afternoon, the president published a rambling online tirade, which, among other things, claimed that Americans now “realize” that data centers are “wealthy and prestigious.” (Recent polling suggests otherwise.) An announcement of sorts soon followed:

We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System. For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term. To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI “Czar” — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!

What, exactly, would the AI Force do? No one seems to have any idea: Trump didn’t elaborate, and White House officials made little effort to add clarity to the president’s weird statement. A Politico report noted, “The tech industry is struggling to make sense of President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that he is creating an artificial intelligence task force and appointing a czar to oversee the administration’s approach to the technology.”

The confusion was understandable but easy to resolve: Pressed to do meaningful work on behalf of the public, Trump presented a gimmick. Offered an opportunity to propose real solutions, the president pitched a stunt that will almost certainly amount to nothing.

Time will tell whether, and to what extent, the administration’s position evolves in the coming weeks and months (a Democratic-led Congress may very well force a change in direction at the White House), but it’s also worth keeping in mind the various considerations that help shape the president’s perspective.

Indeed, the day after Trump’s “AI Force” missive, The Washington Post reported that the president’s “sprawling family business empire has become increasingly intertwined with the boom in artificial intelligence.”

In other words, the president who’s rejecting calls to slow the development of AI is the same president who, as the Post’s report added, has “a personal financial stake in industries benefiting from the AI build-out, creating potential conflicts of interest as his administration makes decisions that could affect the value of those investments.”

A couple of weeks after winning on Election Day 2016, Trump discarded questions about conflicts, telling reporters that “the law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”

Nearly a decade later, he continues to put this principle to the test.

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