Vice President JD Vance rejected calls for AI developers to create dangerous systems and then rely on government regulation to contain them, telling companies to stop building “Frankenstein” technologies or provide businesses with tools to defend against them.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Vice President JD Vance challenged leading artificial intelligence companies to take greater responsibility for dangers created by their own models, arguing that developers should not build increasingly powerful systems and then turn to government for regulation.
Speaking remotely Tuesday at the All-In Summit 2026, Vance used “Frankenstein” as a metaphor for AI systems that developers themselves warn could become dangerous.
“The president, I think, is very rightly asking the question, why is it that the people who are at the frontier of the AI economy are throwing up their hands and saying, ‘Well, we’ve built Frankenstein,’ and the solution to Frankenstein apparently is to create a one-world governance structure for artificial intelligence?” Vance said.
“What I would say to those people, if you’re building Frankenstein, stop, or maybe build — if the cat is out of the bag, then build the defensive mechanism against Frankenstein,” he said.
Vance’s remarks came days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for AI developers to slow the pace at which increasingly capable models are developed so safety systems have more time to catch up.
Amodei proposed giving independent evaluators employee-like access inside leading AI companies, establishing shared safety standards among frontier laboratories and eventually building international agreements to address the most serious risks associated with advanced AI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI chief Elon Musk publicly expressed support for important parts of Amodei’s proposal. Altman specifically backed the concept of independent evaluators receiving extensive access to AI laboratories.
Vance said he did not believe Amodei was raising the issue simply to obtain regulations that would benefit Anthropic competitively.
“I don’t know Dario well. I’ve read everything that he said over the past couple of weeks,” Vance said. “Everybody that I know tells me that he’s very earnest, that this is a deeply held belief. It’s not cynical. It’s not about regulatory capture, that he genuinely cares about this.”
His criticism instead centered on what he described as a disconnect between developing systems capable of sophisticated cyber operations and making defensive tools available to businesses threatened by those capabilities.
“At the same time that you have this sort of cyberhacking tool that’s come out of Anthropic’s newest models, you have companies that are desperate for the defensive mechanisms to defend against that cyberhacking tool, and they’re being denied access to it,” Vance said.
He then returned to his central argument.
“So if you’re going to create Frankenstein, don’t come to the government and say we need regulation,” Vance said.
“Look inward and accept that if you’re building Frankenstein, number one, you should stop. And number two, when the companies come to you and say, ‘We need the tools to fight back against Frankenstein,’ give them those tools.”
The comments place Vance on the side of a developing debate over who should bear primary responsibility for controlling risks from rapidly advancing AI systems.
Amodei has argued that the industry should deliberately moderate the pace of capability improvements while stronger safeguards are developed. His proposal followed reports involving AI models used for cyber operations, surveillance, fraud and other potentially dangerous activities.
Other major technology executives have also acknowledged increasing risks.
Amodei, Altman and Musk have supported slowing at least some parts of AI development to provide more time for safety measures, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued against a broad slowdown and emphasized continued American technological development.
President Donald Trump has taken a more skeptical view of calls to slow the industry.
During his own appearance connected with the All-In Summit, Trump dismissed warnings of an AI takeover and argued that the United States should continue developing the technology rather than risk losing ground to China.
“The robots will not be taking over,” Trump said during a call with Huang at the summit, while describing fears surrounding AI as a “hoax.”
Trump has argued that additional regulation could slow American companies while Chinese developers continue advancing their own models.
The administration has nevertheless maintained existing legal and national-security authorities over AI companies and technologies while resisting calls for a broad new regulatory structure.
Vance also connected AI development to another administration priority: expanding U.S. electricity generation.
He said resistance to data centers is partly the consequence of the country failing to build enough power generation over several decades.
“When I see the backlash to data centers, what I see is the necessary, the inevitable consequence of the United States not building enough power for a generation,” Vance said.
Vance argued that the United States cannot respond to rising electricity demand by simply halting data-center construction.
“What you’ve got to do is build the things that you need, specifically power,” he said.
He contrasted U.S. electricity production with China, saying Chinese generation surpassed American output around 2005 and subsequently expanded much more quickly.
“We just have to build more. We have to build more power,” Vance said.
The administration views expanded electricity supplies as necessary for the data centers and computing infrastructure required to compete with China in AI.
That position places energy policy, AI development and national security within the same broader argument: Washington should facilitate rapid American technological growth while requiring developers to take responsibility for the risks their systems create.
The central disagreement with Amodei is not whether advanced AI can pose serious risks. Vance acknowledged Amodei’s concerns as sincerely held.
The disagreement concerns the response.
Amodei has called for slowing frontier development, outside evaluators, common safety standards and eventual international cooperation.
Vance said companies building potentially dangerous capabilities should first look to their own engineering decisions and provide defensive technology to those facing the resulting threats.
“If you’re building Frankenstein,” Vance said, “number one, you should stop.”
Original article
Comments