US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to establish the first bilateral channel between their countries to monitor artificial intelligence incidents, while keeping dialogue open on the technology’s risks and benefits.
Bilateral channel at centre of Trump-Xi summit
The agreement came during a bilateral summit in which artificial intelligence featured prominently, as debate over its regulation intensified during United Nations and Security Council sessions. The summit’s official announcements focused on approval for the creation of the bilateral channel, but discussions between the two sides covered the technology and its effects extensively.
Trump hosted the Chinese delegation at a formal dinner described as historic, attended by several prominent leaders of technology companies involved in developing artificial intelligence and its infrastructure. The dinner featured lengthy discussions about the sector and its repercussions.
Those attending included Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and his wife, SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, and Tim Cook, whom the article described as Apple’s former chief executive. Also present were OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Microsoft chairman Satya Nadella and AMD chief executive Lisa Su.
The participants are connected to the artificial intelligence sector in various ways: Altman, Brin and Musk offer their own models and technologies, while Huang and Nadella are involved in supporting data centres and investing in the infrastructure needed to operate those models.
Several attendees also have direct ties to China’s technology sector, giving their presence significance in the US-China discussion over the future of the technology. The summit coincided with calls from major world leaders during United Nations General Assembly meetings for artificial intelligence regulation to be an international decision.
Beijing and Washington differ over artificial intelligence regulation
By contrast, Chinese state media focused specifically on Beijing and Washington’s responsibility for managing and developing artificial intelligence, according to a separate report by Bloomberg. The Chinese state television account ‘Yuyuantantian’ said on social media that artificial intelligence represented a shared challenge for China and the United States, arguing that the two countries were capable of addressing the risks associated with it.
This position overlaps with one Trump set out in his opening address to the United Nations General Assembly, when he said the United States rejected global efforts to regulate and control artificial intelligence.
A White House statement on the summit’s results revealed that the two countries had agreed to use the term ‘superintelligence’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence’, in line with the new name adopted by the US president. Trump had announced the term in his opening address to the General Assembly and urged countries and companies to adopt it, saying that in his view it described the technology more accurately.
November summit to address the technology’s risks and benefits
The two sides also agreed to hold a second summit next November to discuss the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, according to Axios. The date sets a course for continuing bilateral talks after the initial agreement on an incident-monitoring channel, alongside an ongoing international debate over which body should be responsible for establishing rules governing the technology.
In a Chinese statement on the meeting, Xi spoke of the possibility of expanding cooperation between the two countries in the near future, saying the two sides could continue dialogue on artificial intelligence, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and work together to prevent its misuse.
The Chinese president added that artificial intelligence should remain under human control regardless of its capabilities, and that the technology should be viewed in terms of the benefits it could provide to humanity. He called for adherence to a human-centred approach and for artificial intelligence to be developed in a way that serves the good of humanity. According to the Chinese statement, Trump agreed with this approach, stressing the need for both sides to maintain dialogue and strengthen cooperation in the artificial intelligence sector.
US restrictions complicate expected technology cooperation
This declared convergence comes despite the continued restrictions imposed by the US government on Chinese companies to prevent them from accessing the most powerful processing chips, as well as ongoing accusations that distillation is being used to acquire US technologies. These factors surround the mechanism of the anticipated cooperation between the two countries.
