Vance to Newsmax: Artificial Intelligence Is Still 'Very Dumb'

Artificial intelligence remains in its early, unreliable stages, and while the technology offers groundbreaking medical potential, it also carries dangerous risks for privacy, security, and morality, according to Vice President JD Vance on Newsmax.

"Artificial intelligence, it's still, in many cases, very dumb," Vance told Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren," in an interview airing Thursday.

"You asked, is it good or is it bad or is it going to help us or is it going to hurt us?" he told Van Susteren.

"The answer is probably both, and we should be trying to maximize as much of the good and minimize as much of the bad."

He said AI is already showing both its promise and its peril.

"Let me give you a very concrete example," Vance said. "So two artificial intelligence headlines that I've read in just the last week: one, researchers used AI to identify a new cancer drug pathway that nobody had ever come up with, and they're actually starting to see some evidence that that could be a credible and promising way to treat certain types of cancer."

That use, he said, is "great."

"That's what we want artificial intelligence to do, is to unlock new therapeutics so that people can live longer, healthier lives," said Vance.

However, he said he also saw an announcement from Sam Altman of OpenAI, who said that "basically they're going to start using AI to introduce erotica and porn and things like that."

"If AI is helping us find new cures for new diseases, that's great, [but if] it's helping us come up with increasingly weird porn, that's bad," the vice president said.

Vance said the administration wants to encourage innovation while setting firm boundaries around AI's social impact.

"I think that we actually need policymakers here," he said, adding that he and President Donald Trump have been focused on the issue.

"We want to lean in as much to the socially positive applications of artificial intelligence," Vance said.

"But look," he added, "we know AI is going to be used by hackers. It's going to be used to defraud the banking system.

"It's going to be used to prey, especially on elderly people, who sometimes won't be able to tell the difference between their granddaughter's voice and an artificial intelligence-generated voice.

"That's a main vector for fraud."

Vance said that like all major technological shifts, AI's effects will depend on how it's directed and managed.

"So it's going to be a mix," he said. "Like any technology, there are positive and negative applications."

Asked about the rise of automation and fears that AI could eliminate jobs, Vance said history shows that technology often creates new opportunities rather than destroying them.

"So I think automation is usually good," he said.

"If you look historically, for example, when the automated teller machine came out, the ATM came out, there were a lot of people said that would destroy jobs in the banking sector, but you actually have more jobs in the banking sector," Vance noted.

He told Van Susteren that he's optimistic that automation will lead to higher productivity and wages, but he is concerned about the surveillance and fraud elements of AI.

"We have to try to harness the technology for the good, for curing diseases, and try to ensure that it's not being used to prey on our kids," he said.

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