Daijiworld Media Network - Washington

Washington, Sep 30: US Vice President JD Vance has dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could evolve into a "Skynet"-like force capable of controlling nuclear weapons and unleashing killer robots, while warning that advanced AI models already pose significant cybersecurity risks.

Vance said public discussion around artificial intelligence, which the Trump administration has also referred to as "super intelligence", had become overly pessimistic and was diverting attention from more immediate risks associated with the technology.

Speaking after a White House meeting with technology industry leaders, Vance said President Donald Trump wanted his administration to address concerns raised by Americans without allowing fear to dictate policy.

"You have a lot of doomerism about AI or super intelligence as we're now calling it," Vance said.

He said popular perceptions of AI were sometimes influenced by science-fiction scenarios.

"I think a lot of Americans, when they think of AI or SI, they think, 'Oh my God, this is Skynet,' right?" Vance said.

"They think the terminators are gonna come and take over everything and, you know, take over our nuclear weapons and have the robots running around killing people. And that's just not gonna happen."

"That's actually not gonna happen," he added.

Vance, however, distinguished such hypothetical scenarios from risks arising from the way AI products are developed and deployed.

"What could happen is you have people who are building AI tools, not actually being careful about what they're doing, about the responsibility they have to build products that actually work, that don't hurt people, et cetera, et cetera," he said.

He said AI developers should take responsibility for the products they create rather than relying on the government to impose regulations.

According to Vance, the administration wanted the AI debate to focus on ensuring that systems operate safely while holding technology companies accountable for their products.

He later identified cybersecurity as one of the most apparent risks already associated with advanced or frontier AI models.

"I think the most obvious negative use case of the Frontier models up to this point is the cyber capability," Vance said.

"We have seen some of these models, by the way, they've been trained this way, but they have remarkable ability to enable hackers to hack into systems," he added.

Vance said technology companies should be equipped with stronger tools to defend their systems against AI-enabled cyberattacks.

"The best weapon against cyber offense is good cyber defense," he said.

The Vice President argued that companies vulnerable to such attacks were also well positioned to develop defensive technologies capable of patching software and protecting computer systems.

Vance also highlighted competition among technology companies as part of the administration's approach to addressing AI-related risks.

He said competition and existing product liability laws could provide safeguards without immediately introducing a broad new regulatory framework.

"Let's actually try what has worked in the past. And if it doesn't work in the future, then build it out from there," Vance said.

"Let's not just throw a massive new regulatory regime against a problem that could make it worse," he added.

Vance said regulations could play a role in improving AI safety without necessarily slowing technological innovation, but stressed that any such rules would need to be carefully designed.

"Regulations can actually make us safer and they can be consistent with innovation, but only if they're careful and only if they're deliberate," he said.