'The Genesis Mission': Donald Trump unveils AI overlord that'll run automated nuclear and biological experiments – We Got This Covered
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U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters from the Resolute Desk after signing an executive order to appoint the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the Oval Office at the White House on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump also signed a memorandum ordering an immediate assessment of aviation safety and ordering an elevation of what he called “competence” over “D.E.I.” (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

‘The Genesis Mission’: Donald Trump unveils AI overlord that’ll run automated nuclear and biological experiments

What could possibly go wrong!?

Being ruled over by an unfeeling AI overlord making cold, calculated decisions based on pure data is looking increasingly great when compared to the clownshow idiocy of the second Donald Trump administration.

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Sure, the AI dictator may well decide that us unpredictable and volatile fleshbags are a chaotic factor that must be violently removed from planet Earth to ensure stability, but at least it’s not a blathering, incoherent mess wasting everyone’s time with nonsense speeches.

So, it’s fortunate for all of us that the White House has just launched the dystopian-sounding “Genesis Mission”, billed as “a Manhattan Project for AI”. Well, at least they’re open and honest that, like the actual Manhattan Project, the result will be a nightmare weapon that will destabilize geopolitics and kill millions.

As detailed on the White House website, Trump is ordering the Secretary of Energy to construct:

“A national AI platform on top of U.S. supercomputers and federal science data, train scientific foundation models, and run AI agents + robotic labs to automate experiments in biotech, critical materials, nuclear fission/fusion, space, quantum, and semiconductors.”

Automated biotech and nuclear fission experiments? What could possibly go wrong?!

It appears the idea is to feed every piece of federally available data into the machine, which will incorporate “datasets from federally funded research, other agencies, academic institutions, and approved private-sector partners.”

Our dark mechanical future

The Genesis Project is ordered to be online within 270 days. This means that it’ll be switched on at around 8 am on Aug. 21, 2026. By 9 am it may have become self-aware. Hopefully, by midday, the nukes will be flying, and we can get down to the fun business of fighting endless waves of nigh-unkillable humanoid death machines.

I suspect the reality will be somewhat less dramatic. Despite the hooting of various AI companies they are nowhere near “artificial intelligence”, merely probabilistic large language and image models that spit out inputs based on pre-existing data.

Sure, there may be some quantum leap in computing that enables some kind of novel creativity, but based on everything we’ve seen from AI, the result of the Genesis Project won’t be scientific breakthroughs but vast amounts of taxpayers’ money being funnelled straight into the pockets of tech billionaires.

But hey, I’m sure that whatever Mechanical Turk they throw together to impress Donald Trump will be really complimentary to him.


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David James
I'm a writer/editor who's been at the site since 2015. I cover politics, weird history, video games and... well, anything really. Keep it breezy, keep it light, keep it straightforward.