The vice president's half-skeptical act is a model for Republicans looking to move beyond Trumpism

There’s something about JD Vance that makes him almost impossible to assess. Like Bigfoot, he’s a naturally blurry creature. His voice lands somewhere between the parents in Charlie Brown specials and those buzzers they put outside convenience stores to chase off teens. The vice president is hostile architecture in human form, a suit stuffed with charisma’s anti-matter.

This has served him well in his quest for political power. Being instantly forgettable is an asset for someone who made their name as a liberal hillbilly whisperer only to switch to an online edgelord identity at the behest of far-right backers. But if you’re willing to hold and rotate Vance’s recent statements in your mind, you’ll find something uncharacteristically interesting. He’s put the tiniest sliver of distance between himself and President Donald Trump on artificial intelligence, and it provides an inkling of how Republicans might move beyond a decade of Trumpism.

I’ll catch you up on the current AI conversation. Large-language models built by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic keep breaking out of their testing sandboxes. The companies actively promote that their products are breaking the law and hacking into other private businesses, showcasing their power while appearing somewhat concerned with safety. Recently, those same AI CEOs have started pleading for government regulation of artificial intelligence, a “stop me before I kill again” plea that many critics believe is meant to lock in their position at the top of the industry.

Trump has been incredulous about the ask. He has thrown his red hat in with AI boosters and reacted to the idea of slowing down as a slight against his discernment. In a day-long rant on Truth Social, the president said the only “guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart . . . president.” He said that there was a “sick conspiracy . . . against AI and data centers” and that slowing down AI development would leave us behind China on the global stage.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he wrote. “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In the week since, Vance has taken a slightly more skeptical tone on AI development. On Monday he told reporters on Monday that the U.S. needs to be “careful” about AI. He looked sideways at CEOs’ request for industry regulation, saying that the move might be a “Trojan Horse” masking their true intentions.

  • Monument@piefed.worldEnglish
    6·
    19 days ago

    Tangentially related - the companies calling for AI regulation:

    1. Want other their competition regulated, but not them - because within a year the barrier to entry will be low enough that most decent tech companies can compete at their level.
    2. Want to set and create the regulatory framework for what’s allowable, so they can bury or buy their upstart competition, in much the same way that companies do in any regulatory capture situation. (Think utility companies, and major industries, like Samsung in SK or GM in the US.)
    3. Want to prevent companies that aren’t (or haven’t become) proxies for the government from developing capacity that would lead to discussions around banning the technology’s less legal uses. If any AI model can facilitate war crimes, then the technology may get banned. If they can say “oh, that model was using the technology in banned ways,” then they can keep hiring IT people with government clearances to try to get multibillion dollar government contracts. It’s a thin paper shield, but it’ll prevent them from getting shut down when someone uses AI to facilitate non-state terror attacks.
    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      4·
      19 days ago

      because within a year the barrier to entry will be low enough that most decent tech companies can compete at their level.

      Glad you brought that up. Just recently someone proved that most flagship models can run on vintage server hardware.

      This whole RAM shortage is just them trying to delay the inevitable.