Key points
- AI should not become a tool for government-imposed censorship: Vance
- Condemns EU’s Digital Services Act and massive regulations
- Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military: Vance
ISLAMABAD: United States (US) Vice President JD Vance calls on the world’s nations to ensure that artificial intelligence does not become a tool for government-imposed censorship, encouraging the embrace of what he calls “a new industrial revolution.”
On Tuesday, Vance addressed world leaders at an Artificial Intelligence Summit in Paris, France, stating that the United States feels “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,” according to Reuters.
The vice president voiced concern about “reports that some foreign governments are considering tightening the screws on US tech companies with international footprints.”
“America cannot and will not accept that, and we think it’s a terrible mistake not just for the United States of America but for your own countries,” he maintained.
Massive regulations
He condemned the European Union’s “Digital Services Act and the massive regulations it created about taking down content and policing so-called misinformation.”
Vance accepted the importance of ensuring that “the internet is a safe place” but contends “it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation.”
However, Vance didn’t mention China or its new AI app DeepSeek by name, Vance said “foreign hostile adversaries” “have weaponized AI software to rewrite history, surveil users and censor speech.”
“Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military, intelligence, and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data, and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security,” he said.
“This administration will block such efforts full-stop.”
New industrial revolution
Vance displayed a positive tone toward the idea of AI and what he described as the “extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution” but warned that such a scenario would never come to fruition “if we allow AI to be dominated by massive players looking to use the tech to censor or control users’ thoughts.”
“The Trump administration will ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias and never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech,” he proclaimed. “We can trust our people to think, to consume information, to develop their ideas, and to debate with one another in the open marketplace of ideas.”
President Donald Trump, last month, signed an executive order designed to ensure that American AI systems are “free from ideological bias and engineered social agendas.”
EU’s announcement
That executive order was closely linked with Trump’s taking office as the 47th president of the United States and the EU’s announcement that it would speed up enforcement of the Digital Services Act, according to the New York Times.
The law, which Vance brought up in his speech, requires social media companies to remove “illegal content” or face penalties as high as 6% of their global annual turnover. While EU lawmakers cite the measure as necessary to combat “foreign interference” and “hate speech,” critics characterized it as an attempt to impose “censorship.”
