At the AI Action Summit in Paris this week, the U.S. declined to sign the statement summarizing the resolutions. But it did make an appearance: Vice President J.D. Vance gave a speech to the audience of dignitaries, tech leaders and regulators. Amid a conference heavy on equitable AI development — specifically, beyond the outsized influence of U.S. companies — and exploring where government fits into the mix, Vance painted a picture how the Trump administration sees things: the U.S. is dominant; it intends to stay there; and regulation be damned if it gets in the way.
The U.S. is developing its own AI action plan, he said, “that avoids an overly precautionary regulatory regime while ensuring that all Americans benefit from the technology and its transformative potential.” Ignoring any reference to current EU regulations, Vance extended an invitation to other countries to work with the U.S. and “follow that model if it makes sense for your nations.”
The speech underscored a wider shift that has taken place around the idea of AI risk, which previously dominated conversations. “I’m not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago,” Vance said. “I’m here to talk about AI opportunity.” His message: the U.S. wants to be number one, and regulation is a killer.
Encouraging the room to be less risk averse, Vance outlined four areas where he said the U.S. will focus its commitments.
First, the government will ensure that U.S. AI technology “continues to be the gold standard worldwide” and a “partner of choice for others” in government and business as they build out services.
But secondly… regulation “could kill” AI if it’s excessive. Deregulation and “pro-growth” AI policies are the way forward, he said.
Third, Vance tapped into questions of bias and using AI to manipulate information. “American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he noted.
Lastly, he addressed the issue of labor and how AI might impact it. “The Trump administration will maintain a pro-worker growth path for AI. so it can be a potent tool for job creation in the United States.”
Vance also used the speech to slam the concept of AI safety in all its guises. At one moment, he implied that a focus on it was at the expense of trying to encourage more industrialisation.
“The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety,” he said. “It will be won by building from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.”
He later returned to AI Safety to confusingly imply that it has been pushed for opportunistic and political reasons.
“When a massive incumbent comes to us asking us for safety regulations, we ought to ask whether that safety regulation is for the benefit of our people or whether it’s for the benefit of the incumbent,” he said. “Now, over the last few years, we’ve watched as governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations have advanced unpopular, and I believe downright ahistorical social agendas through AI.”
Vance walked back some of this towards the end of the speech, but only a little. “This doesn’t mean, of course, that all concerns about safety go out the window, but focus matters. And we must focus now on the opportunity to catch lightning in a bottle, unleash our most brilliant innovators, and use AI to improve the well-being of our nations and their peoples,” he said.
Vance’s focus on lighter regulation, ironically, was not that different from the message from European officials at the Summit.
“AI needs the confidence of the people and has to be safe. And actually this is the purpose of the AI Act to provide for one single set of safe rules across the European Union 450 million people,” EU president Ursula von der Leyen said in her speech earlier Tuesday. “Instead of 27 different national regulations and safeties in the interest of business, at the same time, I know that we have to make it easier and we have to cut red tape and we will.”
The convenient thing about high-level speeches is that they do not have to face how to implement ideas in the real world, and what happens when those ideas conflict with each other in complicated scenarios. That may well be the case here, too.
Vance didn’t spell out any specifics around how AI tools from other countries would be handled by the U.S., nor what impact AI has already had on labor, having been cited by dozens of technology companies as the reason for down-sizing workforces.
Nor did he parse how the kind of regulation he endorsed — “a level playing field” — might play out for smaller outfits versus big tech companies. If there are rules created to help encourage smaller companies to develop and thrive, that might come into conflict with the agendas of larger businesses.
The conference continues later today.
Read our full coverage of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.
