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At the Winning the AI Race Summit, a conference hosted by venture capitalists in Washington, DC, Vice President JD Vance said he was “optimistic” about artificial intelligence automating American jobs.
Vance was responding to a question asked by podcaster and tech investor Jason Calacanis about how Trump 2.0 is thinking about job displacement because of AI.
“For every self-driving car we put on the road, that’s four drivers who are going to have their jobs retired,” Calacanis, an early Uber investor, added. “For every Optimus robot or humanoid robot that eventually makes it into a factory, that’ll be five or six factory jobs.”
Vance seemed more bullish than alarmed, arguing that AI’s impact has yet to be priced into the job market: “If the robots were coming to take all of our jobs, you would see labor productivity skyrocketing in this country,” he said. “But actually, you see labor productivity flatlining. What that means, actually, is that our country is under-indexed in technology and not over-indexed in technology.”
Panelists, including Vance, discussed how the US can dominate the AI race at Wednesday’s who’s who of venture capitalists, startup founders, and politicians. The topic has become an increasingly acute concern in Silicon Valley and on Capitol Hill as geopolitical tensions rise, following the release of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s powerful R1 model in January, which caught many investors and AI entrepreneurs by surprise.
Several other speakers at the event pitched AI as a tool for job creation. Chris Power, founder and CEO of factory automation startup Hadrian, claimed that the company’s new production facility in Arizona — expected to open in late 2025 — could create over 350 new factory jobs.
While Vance expressed optimism about AI job automation, he criticized tech companies for their reliance on international labor.
“On the one hand, you see some Silicon Valley technology firms, especially the big firms, say that they are desperate for workers that they can’t find — that they have to use overseas visa programs to find workers,” he said. “And yet, at the same time, the college-educated employment rate for STEM graduates in this country seems to be declining.
“If you’re not hiring American workers from out of college for these jobs, then how can you say that you have a massive shortage?” Vance added.
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