Vice President JD Vance did not address calls for guardrails to be placed on artificial intelligence development during a Tuesday morning meeting with the House Republican conference.
The vice president spoke to GOP lawmakers at the Republican National Committee as a final pep talk heading into the November elections. But multiple GOP members emerging from the meeting said Vance did not address calls to regulate the AI industry that have quickly gained momentum online and on Capitol Hill.
“No,” Rep. Craig Goldman (R-TX) responded when the Washington Examiner asked if the vice president touched on AI. “It was all about the excitement of the Republicans to get out and vote, talk about him traveling across the nation, and how energized Republican voters are to get out and vote based on what we’ve done here, so we’re just going to continue that message because we have a lot to brag about.”
One Republican member described Vance’s speech as a “pretty typical rah-rah political speech” meant to energize Republicans.
“I think the vice president projected perhaps a little bit more sunny optimism than is probably generally found within members’ hearts, but listen — that’s part of what a party leader needs to do, which is get the troops fired up and make sure they understand that good things are possible,” the Republican said.
There are only 49 days until the November midterm elections, when Republicans are hoping to hold on to their slim House majority. The House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the meeting, said the vice president spoke “a fair amount” about the rise of socialist candidates in Democratic primaries and how those candidates have “views outside of the mainstream.”
Yet missing was any discussion of regulating AI, which has dominated Washington after top executives and industry officials called for guardrails on rapidly developing AI models.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote an open letter over the weekend calling for an international slowdown on AI frontier model development after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and warned that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade” and that Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk backed Amodei’s call, though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has downplayed the concerns.
Vance and President Donald Trump sought to tamp down anxieties over artificial intelligence on Monday, with the vice president saying he felt the requests from AI companies for the federal government to step in and put guardrails felt akin to a “Trojan horse.”
While Republicans have aimed to dampen concerns, Democrats called on House GOP leadership Monday to keep the lower chamber in Washington to address calls to regulate the industry.
“Congress should not leave town until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people in the face of growing concerns being raised by experts within the artificial intelligence industry itself,” Jeffries said. “Republicans have completely abandoned their responsibility to legislate and engage in public policy efforts in a responsible fashion in the area of artificial intelligence.”
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After Thursday of this week, the House will depart for nearly two months and is not scheduled to return until Nov. 9, the week after Election Day. While the House is set to leave town, Trump and Johnson plan to meet with AI executives in the “next week or two,” according to the speaker.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Vance’s team for comment.