Vance addresses House GOP as Congress struggles to find path on AI

Vice President JD Vance is expected to address the regulation of artificial intelligence during a Tuesday appearance before the House Republican Conference.Vance is appearing as concerns over the rapid growth of AI have hit a fever pitch, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) faces pressure to stay in session to deal with AI ahead of the November elections. Both President Donald Trump and Vance have sought to tamp down calls for regulation on Monday. Vance even said that requests from AI companies for the federal government to step in and put guardrails felt akin to a “Trojan horse.”“Just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” Vance said. “So I think we just have to be careful about this.”Trump, for his part, called concerns that AI will bring about the destruction of humanity a “hoax” in a Truth Social post.When asked about Trump’s comments, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) told the Washington Examiner that it is not “surprising” that Anthropic, one of the frontier AI developers, is calling for a heavier regulatory structure “because they want to crush their competitors.”“You know, the next startup, the next company that’s going to be the future tech company would be crushed if you had heavy regulations,” Scalise said. “Now, obviously, there’s laws on the books that say these companies not only have a moral responsibility to be responsible, [but] they have a legal responsibility.”Scalise continued, “You can’t create a product that’s going to kill people, and if they’re doing that, then they’re going to have serious problems.”Vance’s address also comes the same day the House is set to take up the Ratepayer Protection Act, which Scalise called a “really important safeguard.”Johnson has resisted calls to act quickly to regulate the AI industry, instead calling for a meeting with top AI executives to hash out what role the federal government, if any, should have in regulating the technology. That meeting, Johnson said, will take place either at the end of this week or early next week. “But again, we do not want to jump in,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “The reflex of legislative bodies is to cover things up with red tape and hyperregulation. If you do that, then you lose your edge and that is a national security concern.”Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA) told the Washington Examiner that he would be interested in hearing Vance talk about AI regulation and hopes the vice president’s speech will build off of the momentum of his Republican National Committee midterm convention address last week.Even as Congress looks for a path forward on AI models, time to do so ahead of the November elections is limited, with the House scheduled to leave for a seven-week recess on Thursday.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on Monday that 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.”“Republicans have completely abandoned their responsibility to legislate and engage in public policy efforts in a responsible fashion in the area of artificial intelligence,” said Jeffries.The Senate is scheduled to be in session for the next three weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters that installing “some guardrails” on advanced risk AI models makes sense to him, but that any regulation against AI would need a “light touch way that doesn’t squash innovation.”JEFFRIES CALLS ON JOHNSON TO CANCEL BREAK AND KEEP HOUSE IN WASHINGTON TO TACKLE AI“I do think we are in a race with China, and I think there’s huge upside, obviously, with AI as well,” Thune said. “There’s a lot of benefits to society, along with some risks.”The Washington Examiner has reached out to Vance’s team for comment.Lauren Green and Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.