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U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, leaders of rival nations in a race to dominate artificial intelligence, are expected to meet this week against a backdrop of rising concerns about the threats that rogue AI could pose to humanity.
The hopes for finding common ground on concerns surrounding global AI safety are clouded by competition between the two countries. As China narrows the technology gap with the U.S., each country has expressed concern over how AI in the other’s hands could hurt them.
“The U.S.-China conversation in AI is getting caught in the ups and downs in the broader U.S.-China relationship,” says Scott Singer, co-director of the China AI Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On Sunday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said after talks in New York with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of the meeting between Trump and Xi that the two countries discussed the setting up of a mechanism on AI dialogue and proposed a new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents that could impact national security.
Here is a look at some topics that may—or may not—come up for discussion around AI.
The agenda could focus on AI risks that could harm both countries, such as AI-enabled cyberattacks, biological misuse, major model failures or loss of human control, says Sun Chenghao, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In that case, “there is still meaningful room for cooperation,” Sun says.
“It would be a mistake to dismiss the entire safety debate as geopolitical competition,” Sun says. “China itself is paying growing attention to loss-of-control risks, malicious use, cyber threats and the safety of AI agents.”
