The timing could hardly be worse. Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend to discuss AI, President Donald Trump has dismissed public warnings about runaway AI as a “hoax.” Meanwhile, an editorial in the state-owned China Daily accused America’s leading AI companies of using calls for a slowdown to “blunt China’s AI advance.”

Neither the United States nor China is ready to slow down. Neither trusts the other. And rapidly advancing AI systems will not wait for diplomacy to catch up. But these realities do not mean Trump and Xi can ignore the mounting calls for the U.S. and China to talk about AI. Any such dialogue must avoid the two most common pitfalls for U.S.-China diplomacy: setting the ambitions so low that the talks become meaningless or so high that agreement becomes impossible.

Aim too low, and the dialogue becomes a photo op followed by an anodyne communiqué about promoting innovation and reducing risks. Aim too high, chasing sweeping restrictions on frontier development that neither side has the political trust or the capacity to verify and enforce, and the meeting is set up for failure. The former path fails to meet the stakes of the moment; the latter fails to recognize its constraints.

The path to AI safety

A better near-term goal would be for the U.S. and China to pursue AI safety in parallel and demonstrate their progress in practice. That effort should be anchored in technical exchanges that make each country’s AI systems safer on their own terms. The two countries should also establish a protocol to communicate about emerging AI incidents before they spiral into international crises. These steps would represent meaningful progress, far more valuable than lofty statements or unverifiable commitments.

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