Tuesday,
February 11, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 24
Reuters: Hostile adversaries have weaponised artificial intelligence to surveil and censor people, but the United States will block those efforts to undermine AI and will close off ways for them from obtaining capabilities to threaten people, US Vice President JD Vance said yesterday.
Vance, speaking at the AI summit in Paris, did not specify which countries he was alluding to.
He warned Europeans that what he called their excessive regulation of artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.”
Vance, forthright in setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI.
“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit in Paris.
“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added.
Vance said that navigating Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms.
The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration would ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the US sue or investigate the industry’s biggest players.
While Vance said the US would champion American AI — which big players develop — he said, “Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.” He added that the world should be sceptical when incumbents call for safety regulations that could entrench their powerful status.
