HONG KONG (AP) — As concern rises over the risks of artificial intelligence, hopes for any kind of global approach depend on cooperation between the U.S. and China — superpowers that seem increasingly skeptical of each other's AI strategies.
AI governance is expected to be on the agenda in a meeting planned for next week in Washington between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The topic has gained urgency in both countries, with American tech leaders stating that averting worst-case scenarios for rogue AI depends on a degree of cooperation with China.
However, both countries are vying for a decisive advantage on AI, with Trump warning that any efforts to regulate the technology would benefit China. This sets up a meeting in which any agreements might be superficial but could serve as a starting point for further discussions.
"A formal agreement or consensus may be near impossible, but they do not need to go that far," said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs. "Trump and Xi just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries."
Trump has resisted calls to strengthen regulation of the technology, claiming that doing so could allow China to surpass the U.S. in AI. He has repeatedly stated that the nation that leads in this technology "wins."
"We are leading China, and all others," Trump said Monday on social media.
The two countries are advancing the technology in different ways. U.S. companies are pursuing AI frontiers with computing power supported by advanced chips and a rapidly expanding data center infrastructure. In contrast, China is focusing on the global adoption of its open-source, more affordable models.
Chinese AI models have made significant advances and gained traction with American companies, even as U.S.-led restrictions prevent China from accessing the world's most advanced AI chips. While most American frontier models are closed-source, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated Tuesday that the U.S. needs to develop more open-source models to counter China's progress.
The U.S. has accused China of "aggressive, malicious" efforts to extract capabilities from American AI systems. In response, China has accused the U.S. of attempting to suppress Chinese companies to establish a "monopoly of the AI industry."
David Sacks, a top AI adviser to Trump, noted that China has "already rejected" slowing down the pace of developing advanced AI. He mentioned on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" that, unlike the nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it would be impossible to verify whether China would honor any AI commitments.
"In this case, we don't have trust and we can't verify," Sacks said. "So let's not be foolish about this and just hand the whole ball game to China."
Despite these tensions, some individuals connected to the Chinese government see coordination on AI as beneficial. At an annual security and defense conference in Beijing, Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., stated that AI is an area where "we should go ahead and build up" dialogue between Beijing and Washington. "Because there is a need, a growing need, for cooperation," he told the Xiangshan Forum. "So how can we manage the balance?"
Two leading American AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, each restrict access in China but have also called for cooperation with China to manage safety. In his essay last weekend advocating for a slowdown of AI development for safety reasons, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that the U.S. should slow China's progress, including maintaining U.S. restrictions on China's purchases of advanced AI chips. However, he also noted that "global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities."
His essay drew criticism from Beijing, with China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating on Monday that "fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one's interest."
China's state-run Global Times newspaper described Amodei's remarks as "packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a 'Cold War playbook' for the AI sector."
Trump has consulted with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, even calling the maker of the world's most advanced computer chips during a Monday podcast interview. Nvidia has generally supported some chip exports to China to foster an American ecosystem for the technology and a more open relationship on AI, given the number of researchers in China.
In both the U.S. and China, the powerful capabilities of AI have raised alarms among top officials and policymakers. The head of China's Ministry of State Security, its spy agency, warned in an article Sunday that AI poses multiple threats to the country, from political and ideological security to cyberattacks.
In the article, Chen Yixin argued that AI could threaten China's political and ideological security if used by those "with ulterior motives," while singling out Anthropic's and OpenAI's powerful AI models. It stated that these models could be used to "weaponize" cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threaten China's critical information infrastructure.
Several recent AI-related events have also raised concerns in China regarding AI governance, including a U.S. security firm's discovery of AI vulnerabilities in WeChat, China's key messaging app that also offers payment services, as noted by Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.
While Chinese officials indicated after Trump's Beijing summit with Xi in mid-May that both nations had agreed to pursue dialogue on AI development and governance, little progress has been made since then.
Simultaneously, China and the U.S. have been working to form AI alliances with like-minded nations. In July, China launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, a group with 29 founding member countries, including Russia and Pakistan, aimed at promoting global AI governance. This month, Xi has called on BRICS member countries to expedite the establishment of a global AI governance framework and create an open-source AI community.
Some political observers view the China-led organization as a response to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which launched last year and focuses on strengthening collaboration with countries such as Japan, the U.K., and Australia on AI supply chains.
In an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation," Amodei expressed skepticism about the potential outcomes of the Trump-Xi meeting on AI, stating that "the more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of AI progress." However, he acknowledged that achieving this would likely be very difficult.
Leading up to the Trump-Xi meeting, a recent social media post by Yuyuantantian, a Chinese state media-linked account, expressed a similar sentiment, stating, "Only after the United States first demonstrates that the safety rules are equally effective for its own model companies can substantive discussions between the U.S. and China take place."