JD Vance to Steve Deace: AI must serve people — not the other way around

As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the economy, Americans are asking whether the technology is moving faster than the public can keep up — and BlazeTV host Steve Deace wants their questions answered.

So Vice President JD Vance is doing just that.

“A lot of our audiences around the country, Mr. Vice President, kind of feel like this is kind of being thrust on them, and they haven’t had time to breathe,” Deace tells Vance, noting that in contrast, even the internet “slowly rolled out phase by phase.”

“It didn’t in just 10 minutes just take everything over,” he continues. “And I think a lot of people feel like AI is. Like nobody wants China to dictate this technology to us. At the same time, you know, people do care about land use and making sure they’re heard, and are we building these things for jobs that will actually go to Americans?”

“Can you give us some clarity on this at all?” Deace asks.

“So first on the data center thing, my view is that the political backlash to the data center thing is fundamentally about local control, which obviously we love. As the president of the United States has said, these are important engines of the economy, but they have to be done in the right way,” Vance says.

“And I think the most important way to ensure that they’re done in the right way is for people to follow the Trump administration’s taxpayer protection pledge,” he explains, pointing out that in communities where data centers are building their own power sources, there’s less political backlash.

“When you, on the other hand, have a data center that’s tapping into the pre-existing grid where people see their power bills go through the roof, that’s a real problem,” Vance says. “I don’t want a data center built if it means that local residents are going to have to pay higher electricity costs.”

As for AI in general, Vance explains that the principle he applies is that “technology exists to serve the human person and the human person of course exists ultimately to have a relationship with their creator.”

“I don’t think that we can see technology as the end, and I think that we have to make these technology tools subservient to human operators,” he says.

“And so where I get a little worried is when I see the technology companies come out and say, ‘We’ve lost control. We can no longer control these tools.’ And that brings me to my final point, which is the solution to these problems is to hold the tech companies accountable,” he continues.

“Not to give them regulatory protection and allow regulatory capture,” he adds.

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