President Donald Trump has given America’s intelligence chief another assignment. Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton will serve as the administration’s new artificial intelligence czar and lead what Trump calls the Super Intelligence Force.

Clayton has 120 days to assess the risks and opportunities of advanced AI, review how the federal government learns of breaches, hacks, and other incidents, and recommend what role Washington should play, Reuters reported, citing the task force charter. He shares leadership with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, the officials responsible for consumer protection, defense technology, and the federal workforce.

“The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton told The Wall Street Journal. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries.” He has a point.

America is competing with China for leadership in what may prove to be the most consequential technology since nuclear energy. Beijing is building its own AI ecosystem, including a plan to spend about $295 billion over five years on data centers stocked largely with homegrown chips. Allowing an authoritarian rival to dominate advanced AI would carry serious economic and national security consequences.

That is why Trump made technological leadership a national priority. His June national security memorandum directs the Pentagon and intelligence community to accelerate AI adoption while preserving human accountability. The Pentagon’s new Autonomous Warfare Command shows how quickly that policy is moving from strategy into institutions. Clayton’s assignment is broader: help determine how the nation itself should govern ever more capable machines.

The administration is also changing the vocabulary. On September 29, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “Super Intelligence,” or SI. The White House says the new name conveys the true capabilities of today’s systems, “unlocking new forms of human creativity.”

One qualification matters. The order does not claim that today’s machines have achieved what scientists mean by superintelligence. For now, it defines SI exactly as existing federal law defines artificial intelligence and gives the president’s science adviser 60 days to propose a new definition. That distinction matters because words shape expectations. Call every chatbot “super intelligence,” and Americans may credit machines with powers they lack, or shrug off the warning when a genuinely superhuman system arrives. The label carries a subtler danger as well: it invites us to confuse superior performance with superior judgment.

A machine may become superhuman at coding, mathematics, scientific analysis, military planning, or countless other intellectual tasks. It may eventually exceed human performance across most measurable cognitive abilities.

But super intelligence is not super wisdom.

That should matter to Clayton’s task force, the companies building these systems, and every American who will live and work alongside them.

The challenge is already visible. On September 29, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and xAI signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a pact calling for internal controls and independent auditors. The accord is voluntary and carries no penalties, and it does not require companies to disclose audit results. Even before it was signed, a September Reuters/Ipsos poll found 73% of Americans worried AI companies were not doing enough to prevent serious harm. The same share placed safe and responsible development ahead of winning the international AI race.

Americans need not choose between safety and leadership. We must define what winning means.

The stakes extend well beyond Silicon Valley. Clayton’s task force must consider what happens when autonomous systems enter national security, workplaces, schools, and government. Each institution will face a version of the same question: What should machines be permitted to decide, and who answers for the consequences?

That question is harder than choosing between regulation and innovation. Too little restraint could expose Americans to systems whose capabilities outrun their safeguards. Too much could handicap American companies against Chinese competitors operating under very different rules. Clayton’s challenge is to preserve American technological strength without confusing technological power with human authority.

Christians should bring another question to the discussion: What makes intelligence valuable in the first place?

Scripture never equates intelligence with human worth. The psalmist asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:4-5, ESV). Human beings possess worth because of who created us and what He created us to be, not because we can calculate faster, remember more facts, or outperform every machine.

That distinction grows weightier each time a machine outperforms us. If human significance rests upon intellectual performance, then every advance in artificial intelligence appears to diminish us. But our worth rests on God’s care and the honor He bestows, which no technology can reach. Capability does not confer conscience, moral responsibility, or wisdom.

Nor can any benchmark measure wisdom, because wisdom has a divine source. Solomon writes, “For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6, ESV).

Intelligence tells us what can be done. Wisdom asks whether it should be done.

That may be the most important distinction Clayton’s Super Intelligence Force must preserve during the next 120 days.

America should seek technological superiority over its adversaries. It should encourage innovation, strengthen the infrastructure that makes AI possible, and equip scientists, businesses, and national security professionals with powerful tools. It should also show the world that a free society can develop extraordinary technological power without surrendering human authority to it.

Being first matters. It just isn’t enough.

America’s success will be measured by more than whether we build the world’s most capable machines. It will also be measured by whether a free people remain capable of governing what they have built.

Super intelligence may someday describe our machines. Wisdom, conscience, and moral responsibility must continue to describe us.