When Xi Jinping arrived in Washington on September 23, artificial intelligence (AI) was billed as an area of possible common ground. A summer of alarming incidents in American labs, and Anthropic chief Dario Amodei’s call to “pace the frontier”, had pushed AI safety onto the summit agenda. The groundwork was laid in New York on September 20, when US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held the first round of AI talks within their trade mechanism. Washington proposed a channel to notify AI incidents with national-security consequences.

The summit confirmed this modest package: A dialogue on risks and benefits, a channel for incidents, a next meeting by November. But the two sides could not agree on what to call the subject. The White House fact sheet says the leaders “agreed to use the term ‘super intelligence’ rather than ‘artificial intelligence’”. China’s list of agreed outcomes speaks of a “China-US dialogue on artificial intelligence”.

The difference reflects two outlooks, apart from Donald Trump’s idiosyncrasy. At the UN, Trump said he would “only encourage super intelligence… not rein it in”, watching it “through the Department of Justice”. His language is of a race to be won. Xi’s is one of control. At the White House, he urged the two countries to “ensure that the development of AI is always under human control”.

Xi also told Trump the two should “play to their strengths rather than guard against each other”, a clear shot at American export controls. He offered a new framing of the relationship: Cooperation as the mainstay, competition within limits, differences under control, peace within reach. He called the rivalry “a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which one either wins or........

© Indian Express