Xi Tells Trump AI Must Stay Under 'Human Control' at Summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday that Beijing and Washington 'have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good, and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control and serves the well-being of the people,' The Hill reported.

Trump, who has spent recent weeks pushing to rebrand AI as 'super intelligence,' framed it very differently. Ahead of the meeting he posted on Truth Social that 'Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is,' adding 'Our guardrail is the DOJ!' Bloomberg reported no formal moves toward joint US-China AI guardrails emerged from the summit itself, though the NBC News writeup notes the US had proposed exchanging safety alerts with China for AI-related incidents that could affect national security.

Away from the lecterns, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held an eight-hour meeting in New York on September 21 and sketched a mechanism to notify each other about AI activity that could rise to the level of a national security threat, including runaway agents, cyberattacks and bioweapons development. Reporting has likened it to the Cold War red phone Washington and Moscow set up after the Cuban Missile Crisis. AI regulation has been our busiest beat this quarter, and quiet bilateral work while leaders publicly resist joint frameworks is a shape it keeps taking.

China's commerce ministry said Thursday the two countries had held their first dialogue on AI. State news agency Xinhua mentioned AI only briefly in its readout.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Shenzhen in about two months to discuss AI guardrails.