It’s great to talk about the importance of American dynamism and what our administration is going to do to support so many of the country’s most groundbreaking and compelling companies.
I know that you guys are working hard every single day. And I think it’s pretty good news that, as of a couple of months ago, you have an administration that’s working with you and facilitating your hard work instead of making it harder to innovate, which is, I think, what the last administration did—though, in defense of Joe Biden, he was asleep most of the time. I don’t think he totally realized what he was doing, but it certainly didn’t make it easier—his administration did not—for our innovators.
Now, as some of you may have seen, I spoke at a conference in Paris last month, where my message to a group of CEOs and foreign leaders was that we should embrace the future head-on. We shouldn’t be afraid of artificial intelligence and that, particularly for those of us lucky enough to be Americans, we shouldn’t be fearful of productive new technologies. In fact, we should seek to dominate them. And that’s certainly what this administration wants to accomplish.
I suspect that most of you in this room are of like mind, and if you’re not, I don’t know why the hell you’re at the American Dynamism Conference. But I received some pushback from people who are worried about the disruptive effects of AI.
You know, one journalist suggested the speech highlighted the tension between the “techno-optimists” and the “populist right” of President Trump’s coalition.
And today, I’d like to address these tensions as a proud member of both tribes. And let me put it simply: While this is a well-intentioned concern, I think it’s based on a faulty premise. This idea that tech-forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably going to come to a loggerheads is wrong.
I think the reality is that, in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of course.
I think the reality is that, in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of course.
As a Catholic, I think back to Pope John Paul II’s opening lines of his encyclical Laborem Exercens: “Through work, man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives.”
