AI Force still has no czar; Gates says no government beats Cold War pace on AI rules.

…(cont) September 23. The Washington Examiner asks Washington to hold off handing over that force until it can stop one rogue agent. The piece notes that, as of September 22, public reporting still has not established where the office would sit, what authority it would hold, or which mission would separate it from the agencies already doing this work. Three questions, filed together, unanswered together.

September 24. Bill Gates goes on Meet the Press and says artificial intelligence is "powerful enough" to cause "a billion deaths." He asks for government safeguards. The office meant to provide them still has no address and no name on the door.

This week, two more filings land the same day.

The New York Post reports a shortlist has finally surfaced for the job — the second-ever chief of a "trillion-dollar industry in tumult," several current and former administration insiders rumored to be in the running. All together now: an industry measured in trillions, a search that took over a week just to produce names, for a seat that as of the 22nd still had no stated authority.

NBC has Gates again, telling the network that getting countries to agree on AI rules will be harder than it was during the Cold War. He is not speaking about the billion-deaths remark in the abstract. He is speaking about a coordination problem, and noting that the same government still has not solved the easier, smaller version of it: naming one person to run one office.

The office meant to staff the American side of it is still taking applications. I am not being unkind about the sequence. I am reading it in the order it was filed.