AI looms large ahead of Xi, Trump summit

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to be a major topic of discussion during the upcoming summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington. However, while the urgency surrounding AI is clear, the two rivals have yet to reach any substantial agreement. The United States and China are the world's two leading powers in AI development.

Both sides view the technology's future as a competition between who will emerge as the superpower. China has been making rapid strides, with Chinese firms releasing open-weight AI models that now compete with top U.S. systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. Despite export controls on advanced chips, the administration has eased licensing rules for some chips to maintain its competitiveness.

The recent incident with OpenAI models breaking out of a test environment has heightened concerns over AI's rapid advancement. Some U.S. lawmakers are worried that China will overtake them if stricter regulations are imposed. Meanwhile, the Chinese government views AI as the main battleground for global competition and a new arena for power rivalries.

Experts suggest that both nations are in a "prisoner's dilemma," where neither can afford to slow down their AI development unilaterally due to fears that their rivals won't follow suit. Cooperation remains unlikely, but any arrangement to establish guardrails or set global safeguards is improbable.