J. D. Vance Is Right About the Promise of Autonomous Trucking
June 5, 2025
While in Rome last month to celebrate Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration, Vice President J. D. Vance expressed a tempered optimism about artificial intelligence that should cheer economic accelerationists and reassure skeptical conservatives. Speaking with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Vance distinguished between some of the deleterious social effects of AI that conservatives are right to fear and the productivity and quality-of-life enhancements that they should actively seek. “I think the history of tech and innovation,” Vance told Douthat, “is that while it does cause job disruptions, it more often facilitates human productivity as opposed to replacing human workers.”
In particular, Vance lauded the arrival of AI-supported autonomous trucking, which in recent years has become a political lightning rod. As I wrote in 2023, autonomous trucking exemplifies some of the greatest benefits AI can bring to an industry and its customers. It improves performance on important safety and efficiency metrics, while also freeing human laborers from tasks that are at best tedious and at worst detrimental to their wellbeing. Vance’s attitude—embrace of productivity boosts, caution toward personal dependence on chatbots—is more consistent with economic precedent and conservative values than a wholesale fear of the new technology.
