US Vice President JD Vance has warned Europe not to adopt “overly precautionary” regulations on artificial intelligence as the US and the UK refused to join dozens of other countries in signing a declaration to ensure that the technology is “safe, secure and trustworthy.”
The two countries held back from signing the communique agreed by about 60 countries at the AI Action summit in Paris on Tuesday as Vance vowed that the US would remain the dominant force in the technology.
“The Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US, with American-designed and manufactured chips,” Vance told an audience of world leaders and tech executives at the summit.
“America wants to partner with all of you… but to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it.”
The summit declaration calls for “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all.”
While the commitments are non-binding, both the US and UK had signed similar declarations at previous iterations of the AI summit.
In addition to the new US administration’s “America First” objections to the communique, one person close to the British government suggested the wording was “too restrictive.”
The harder US stance comes as competition is heating up with China on developments around AI: chip manufacturing, so-called foundational models and AI chatbots, and the energy needed to power supercomputers.
The recent arrival of a new cut-price AI model from DeepSeek, a little-known Chinese research lab, shocked Silicon Valley groups such as OpenAI, which thought they had a commanding advantage.
Meanwhile, Europe is seeking a foothold in the AI industry to avoid becoming too reliant on the US or China. At the two-day summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, European leaders and companies unveiled about 200 billion euros of planned investments in data centers and computing clusters to underpin the region’s AI efforts.
US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration at summit
