Ahead of the Washington summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, the United States and China have agreed to an official dialogue on artificial intelligence designed to increase transparency between the two nations.
The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the arrangement on Sunday following talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York. Reports from the Financial Times and The Information confirm the details.
Bessent outlined a proposal for a notification mechanism. This system would trigger an alert should an AI incident pose a risk to national security. The goal is to establish a shared understanding of common objectives and shared dangers. Officials plan a subsequent meeting to finalise the specifics of the reporting protocol.
“We think that just like any cross-border activity, moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and number two AI powers in the world is very important,” Bessent said at JPMorgan’s headquarters in Manhattan. The delegations spent a full day negotiating the terms.
The announcement follows warnings from industry leaders that humanity might lose control of the technology unless research slows down. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer clarified, however, that export controls on advanced AI chips were not part of the discussion.
Alongside the new AI talks, Greer noted that both sides formalised a “board of trade”. Trump and Xi previously discussed this body during their meeting in Beijing in May. Bessent described the progress as successful.
“We just had a very successful engagement with the Chinese on trade and AI, completing where we left off in Beijing,” Bessent said. “[In Beijing] we created the board of trade and began the subject of AI, and this evening those were operationalised.”
A Washington summit under the shadow of the trade war
Trump is set to welcome Xi on Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews. The main summit takes place on Thursday in Washington and includes a state dinner. This marks the first time the two leaders have met on US soil since 2017.
One key topic is likely to be a possible extension of the trade truce both sides reached in October in Busan, South Korea. At that time, the US paused planned export controls against thousands of Chinese companies, while China delayed restrictions on rare earths.
According to the Financial Times, China pushed for an extension through the end of Trump’s term, while the US aimed to cap it at six months. Washington is worried that Beijing isn’t keeping its rare earths commitments and is also limiting exports to Japan, which are just as critical for US supply chains.
Although US officials had floated an AI slowdown agreement between the two superpowers, Trump has rejected the idea given the AI race with China.
What it means
The new dialogue does not stop the development of AI technology. Instead, it creates a channel for the two governments to talk when specific incidents threaten national security. For the people building and deploying these systems, the change is procedural rather than technical. They will face a new layer of diplomatic reporting if their work triggers security concerns, but the underlying research and tooling continue without the export restrictions that were previously on the table.
