At the third American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance discussed his approach to AI.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm sure you'll get through it, and it's great to be with you all, and it's great to talk
00:05about the importance of American dynamism and what our administration is going to do
00:11to support so many of the country's most groundbreaking and compelling companies.
00:15I know that you guys are working hard every single day, and I think it's pretty good news,
00:21right, that as of a couple of months ago, you have an administration that's working
00:24with you and facilitating your hard work instead of making it harder to innovate, which is,
00:28I think, what the last administration did, though in defense of Joe Biden, he was asleep
00:33most of the time.
00:34I don't think he totally realized what he was doing, but it certainly didn't make it
00:37easier.
00:38His administration did not for our innovators.
00:40Now, as some of you may have seen, and I talked about this with Ben backstage, I spoke at
00:44a conference in Paris last month where my message to a group of CEOs and foreign leaders
00:49was that we should embrace the future head on.
00:52We shouldn't be afraid of artificial intelligence, and that particularly for those of us lucky
00:57enough to be Americans, we shouldn't be fearful of productive new technologies.
01:02In fact, we should seek to dominate them, and that's certainly what this administration
01:06wants to accomplish.
01:07I suspect that most of you in this room are of like mind, and if you're not, I don't know
01:11why the hell you're at the American Dynamism Conference, but I received some pushback from
01:16people who are worried about the disruptive effects of AI.
01:21One journalist suggested the speech highlighted the tension between the, quote, techno-optimists
01:27and the populist right of President Trump's coalition, and today I'd like to speak to
01:32these tensions as a proud member of both tribes, and let me put it simply.
01:37While this is a well-intentioned concern, I think it's based on a faulty premise.
01:42This idea that tech forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably going to
01:47come to a loggerheads is wrong.
01:49I think the reality is that in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of
01:55course, and speaking as a Catholic, I think back to Pope John Paul II's opening lines
02:01of the encyclical Labora Mixarens, quote, through work, man must earn his daily bread
02:10and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology, and above all, to
02:15elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives,
02:21end quote.
02:22Now, I quote the Holy Father not only because I'm a fan of his, but also because he rightly
02:26understood that in a healthy economy, technology should be something that enhances rather than
02:32supplants the value of labor, and I think there's too much fear that AI will simply
02:37replace jobs rather than augmenting so many of the things that we do.
02:41Now, in the 1970s, if you go back a little ways, many feared that the automated teller
02:47machine, what we call the ATM, would replace bank tellers.
02:50In reality, the advent of the ATM made bank tellers more productive, and you have more
02:55people today working in customer service in the financial sector than you had when the
02:59ATM was created.
03:00Now, they're doing slightly different jobs, of course.
03:03Yes, they're doing more interesting tasks also, and importantly, they're making more
03:08money than they were in the 1970s.
03:11Now, when we innovate, we do sometimes cause labor market disruptions.
03:15That happens.
03:18But the history of American innovation is that we tend to make people more productive,
03:23and then we increase their wages in the process, and I think all of us believe that's a good
03:26thing.
03:27Now, after all, who would claim that man was made less productive by the invention of the
03:32transistor or the metal lathe or the steam engine?
03:36Real innovation makes us more productive, but it also, I think, dignifies our workers.
03:41It boosts our standard of living.
03:43It strengthens our workforce and the relative value of its labor.
03:48And as Americans, all of us should be particularly proud of our extraordinary heritage.
03:52I think it is American heritage of inventing things and of our nation's status to this
03:57day as the world's foremost driver of research and development.
04:01But all of this, the role that technology plays in a labor market, and whether we greet
04:07innovative breakthroughs with excitement or with trepidation, depends on the purpose of
04:12our economic system in the first place, and I think this is where the populace have an
04:17important point.
04:18It should be no surprise that when we send so much of our industrial base to other countries,
04:23we stop making interesting new things right here at home.
04:26Look, for example, at shipbuilding.
04:28Now, if you go back to World War II, America constructed thousands of so-called liberty
04:33ships to carry troops, cargo, and other things, building them at a pace of three ships every
04:39two days, three ships every two days.
04:42Now we build about five commercial ships across an entire year in the United States of America.
04:48And as a result, the United States today accounts for 0.1 percent, one-tenth of one percent
04:55of global shipbuilding.
04:56China, on the other hand, now makes more commercial ships than the rest of the world combined.
05:02In fact, one of Beijing's state-owned firms built more commercial ships just last year
05:07than all of America has produced since the end of World War II.
05:12So while we remain the leader in technology and innovation, I think there are troubling
05:17signs on the horizon.
05:19And I raise all this to ask, does this sound like a regime, I'm speaking of China, that
05:24will pass up on the opportunity to use AI or any other technology to advance their own
05:29interests and further undermine the interests of their rivals?
05:32I think the answer is obvious, and that's why America, we've got to be tech forward.
05:36Yes, there are concerns, yes, there are risks, but we have to be leaning into the AI future
05:41with optimism and hope because I think real technological innovation is going to make
05:46our country stronger.
05:49So deindustrialization poses risks both to our national security and our workforce.
05:55It's important because it affects both.
05:57And the net result is dispossession for many in this country of any part of the productive
06:03process.
06:05And when our factories disappear and the jobs in those factories go overseas, American
06:11workers are faced not only with financial insecurity, they're also faced with a profound
06:15loss of personal and communal identity.
06:19And so to come full circle on this tension, alleged tension between the populace and the
06:25techno-optimists, I can understand a reaction of skepticism when we talk about the revolutionary
06:30potential of new invention and artificial intelligence and all the other incredible
06:34technologies that you guys are working.
06:38But I think that that tension is a little overstated, and so I'm going to come back
06:43to what's sort of dividing some of the tech optimists and the populace on our side.
06:50I think the populace, when they look at the future and when they compare it to what's
06:54happened in the past, I think a lot of them see alienation of workers from their jobs,
07:00from their communities, from their sense of solidarity.
07:03You see the alienation of people from their sense of purpose.
07:06And importantly, they see a leadership class that believes welfare can replace a job and
07:12an application on a phone can replace a sense of purpose.
07:15Now, I remember a Silicon Valley dinner in particular back when I was in my tech days
07:22where my wife and I were sitting around talking to some of the leaders of the important technology
07:27firms of the United States, and this was probably in 2016 or 2017.
07:33And I was talking about my real worry that we were heading in a direction where America
07:37could no longer support middle-class families working on middle-class wages, and importantly,
07:43that even if you had enough economic dynamism to provide the wealth to ensure those people
07:49could afford to buy a house and afford their food and so forth, that even if you replaced
07:54the financial element of their jobs, you would destroy something that was dignified
07:59and purposeful about work itself.
08:01And I remember one of the tech CEOs who was there, that CEO, you would know his name if
08:05I mentioned it, he was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.
08:09He said, well, I'm actually not worried about the loss of purpose when people lose their
08:13jobs.
08:14And I said, okay, well, what do you think is going to replace that sense of purpose?
08:18And he said, digital, fully immersive gaming.
08:24And then my wife texted me underneath the table and said, we have to get the hell out
08:28of here.
08:29These people are effing crazy.
08:31Now, I don't think that, of course, that CEO's views are representative of most people in
08:38this room, but when I think about a lot of the workers, based on what they've seen in
08:45the past, are very worried about the future because, frankly, their leadership has failed
08:50to serve them.
08:51And then I think about this from the perspective of a lot of the tech optimists.
08:54I think a lot of the tech optimists, they see over-regulation.
08:58They see stifling innovation.
09:01You guys are builders.
09:02They are builders.
09:03And while they may sympathize with those who lost a job, they're much more frustrated that
09:07the government won't allow them to build the jobs of the future.