Elina Noor
Within the first few minutes of United States Vice-President J.D. Vance’s address at the Paris AI Action Summit last month, he declared he was not there to talk about AI safety but about AI opportunity.
What he meant, as he went on to make clear, was not only should safety considerations be subordinated to innovation but that the Trump administration would double down on US leadership across the entire artificial intelligence stack – from semiconductors and algorithms to computing power and applications. AI opportunities, as it turns out, should be subject to “America first”.
Vance’s speech should come as no surprise. The US desire to ensure technological primacy has been a feature of different administrations, marked by an increasingly antagonistic stance against China that is threatening to draw in Southeast Asian countries that are loath to choosing sides amid geopolitical polarisation. With countries in the region placing big bets on the AI value chain for economic growth and digital transformation strategies, two areas of concern stand out.
First, Washington’s deprioritisation of AI safety in favour of innovation and free speech reveals a troubling picture of trivialising harm in many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia, which has had painful experiences with unbridled misinformation and disinformation before.
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