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President Donald Trump wants the United States to defeat China in artificial intelligence, yet his Thursday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping places the technology’s dangers on the agenda. Neither government appears willing to surrender momentum in a contest both regard as consequential.

Recent incidents have sharpened concern about what increasingly autonomous AI systems can do online. OpenAI said one of its research models gained unauthorized access to parts of the AI platform Hugging Face, while Anthropic found that AI was being used to automate parts of cyberattacks.

Those cases have fueled fears that increasingly autonomous models could make attacks faster and more difficult to contain. Officials are now considering whether a communication channel could help both governments respond when incidents reach the national security level.

Ahead of the meeting, Scott Bessent discussed the prospect of a “U.S.-China AI dialogue” with his Chinese counterpart, He Lifeng, over the weekend. The discussion included a possible channel for incidents “up to a national security level.”

“Leaders in both countries are spooked by the increasing cyber capabilities of AI models, and especially agents acting autonomously to escape containment and breach websites,” Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNBC.

The safety discussion comes as broader tensions remain firmly in place. Washington continues restricting China’s access to Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips and has accused Chinese AI companies of using distillation, a practice involving training models on the output of more advanced U.S. systems.

Beijing rejects that accusation. The dispute sits alongside a wider technology contest in which the United States secured an early lead in developing large language models through companies including OpenAI and Anthropic.

Chinese models, however, have posted major capability gains in recent months. Companies around the world, including businesses in America, are increasingly adopting them.

Trump previously dismissed warnings that AI could pose an existential threat to humanity. Those risks have been highlighted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic chief Dario Amodei as they called for regulatory oversight and an industry slowdown.

“If we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position,” Trump told reporters earlier this month. In a Truth Social post Monday, however, he said the government “will rein things in if we have to.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., expressed hope that the leaders could establish safeguards, while recognizing that the summit itself may matter more than specific deliverables. “How about we just agree that you should not be able to have self-improving AI?” Khanna said.

Khanna also asked why Trump would not seek a reasonable and enforceable agreement with Xi. He called for an approach based on verifying compliance rather than simply trusting promises.

Mehta said the most plausible agreements could involve common definitions and frameworks for the safety of powerful AI models. An emergency communication mechanism for discussing incidents could also be within reach.

Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, described a channel covering national security incidents as a “modest” but positive move. He said an agreement to slow the rapid pace of AI development was “extremely unlikely.”

McGuire said China has historically used AI dialogues “to complain about U.S. export controls,” which Washington applies to block sales of the most advanced AI chips to China. He added that Chinese state media has largely rejected concerns from leading U.S. AI laboratories about potentially catastrophic risks.

Despite the restrictions, several Chinese firms have reportedly accessed the chips’ computing power remotely through data centers in Southeast Asia. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said chip controls were not on the agenda during preliminary weekend talks, although China could seek their relaxation, according to Melanie Hart of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

Distillation could also surface during the talks, with U.S. companies and officials accusing Chinese laboratories of using the practice to gain ground. In July, Bessent threatened sanctions against companies doing it and said the administration had found “watermarks of our U.S. large language models on many of the Chinese models,” calling it “unacceptable.”

Mehta said cooperation cannot damage either country’s ability to compete on the merits of its technology. He also said verification is essential because policymakers will not merely accept their counterparts’ word, requiring both technical and governance tools to ensure information exchanged between the countries is accurate.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.