By Sam Schechner and Stacy Meichtry

PARIS -- The Trump administration wants the U.S. to dominate the artificial-intelligence revolution, and is warning American allies to get on board with its light-touch approach to tech regulation or risk being left out.

The U.S. is winning the race to build the best AI-training chips and the most advanced AI algorithms, and "intends to keep it that way," Vice President JD Vance told a collection of world leaders -- including French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- gathered Tuesday for an AI summit in the French capital.

Vance's remarks stood in contrast to the push by other leaders at the summit to agree on a common set of principles that they say will lead to safe AI systems that are energy efficient and available to the developing world.

Dozens of governments attending the summit signed a joint declaration on those goals that the U.S. and U.K. declined to endorse, delivering a major setback to the summit's ambition to build an international consensus around the new technology.

The divisions were thrown into relief as Vance left the summit before its conclusion, skipping the customary group photo with other leaders.

U.S. willingness to join with foreign capitals to build AI systems, Vance said, will require a regulatory landscape that "fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it."

"We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off," Vance warned, before citing European regulations that he said pose an unfair burden on American companies. "We need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation."

The European Union's executive arm has used new digital competition and content-moderation laws to target U.S. tech companies including Meta Platforms, Elon Musk's X and Apple for alleged violations that could lead to billions of dollars in fines.

Vance said Tuesday that the Trump administration was troubled by the idea that "some foreign governments are considering tightening the screws on U.S. tech companies," adding: "America cannot and will not accept that, and we think it's a terrible mistake."

Vance's promotion of U.S. AI supremacy also struck a contrast with Macron's effort to push for more AI investment in France and Europe, rather than ceding the lead to the U.S. France is leaning on nuclear power to announce new AI computing facilities that it says could put the country on par with the U.S.'s Stargate plans to build massive AI data centers.

The EU on Tuesday announced its own investment program of 20 billion euros, equivalent to $20.61 billion, to build large AI data centers. That comes on top of European corporate pledges to invest billions more in European AI.

Macron and other European officials have said that they aim to speed approvals and cut red tape for AI projects, but they have also supported the EU's new AI law that will impose, among other things, obligations on AI developers to test the most cutting-edge models for an array of risks.

"Yes, AI needs competition. But it also needs collaboration. And it also needs to be safe," said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, in a speech following Vance's, in which she defended the EU laws as promoting EU values.

India's Modi also called for broad AI-governance efforts that include the rest of the world. "There is a need for collective global efforts to establish governance and standards that upload our shared value, address risk and build trust," he said.

Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 11, 2025 08:09 ET (13:09 GMT)

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