President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss artificial intelligence amid growing competition between the United States and China over the technology.
Trump and Xi are set to meet this week, with AI, the war in Iran, trade, and other issues expected to be on the agenda. AI has emerged as a particularly significant area of discussion as the U.S. and China remain the world’s two leading AI powers, even as concerns grow over the risks posed by increasingly capable systems.
Over the past few weeks, concerns over AI safety have intensified amid its rapid development and potential risks to humanity. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have both supported calls for stronger safeguards and a slower pace of development, arguing that governments and companies need to address potential risks as AI capabilities advance even more.
On Thursday, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will host Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at a state dinner. Tech titans are also expected to join, including SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to ABC News.
Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty said Wednesday that Trump and Xi should focus on establishing guardrails for AI rather than slowing technological development.
"They absolutely should be talking about this, and I think they should be talking about it in a constructive manner," Hagerty said at an event hosted by the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University. "But I don't think the outcome would be or should be well - let's put a brake on innovation… but it should be how we responsibly manage this going forward."
Hagerty criticized companies asking for regulators to intervene.
"They can slow it down themselves if they want to right now," Hagerty said. "It's up to them to manage this, in a responsible manner, and there are liability issues if they don't. So it seems odd to me that they come running to the government to do this."
The U.S. has also proposed a new AI safety notification mechanism for both Xi and Trump to discuss, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to multiple news reports. That system would alert each other to incidents that could affect national security.