US and China to advance 'superintelligence' dialogue at Trump-Xi summit, Bessent says

The United States and China should "harbor no illusions" about their differences on artificial intelligence as they cooperate on the technology's risks while competing for leadership, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on November 10, Reuters reported. He spoke to the National Committee on US-China Relations in New York.

The Shenzhen meeting

Bessent will travel to China next week for President Donald Trump's third meeting this year with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meeting in Shenzhen, on the sidelines of the November 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, will advance a new bilateral dialogue on "superintelligence" (SI), Bessent said, using the Trump administration's preferred term for the technology.

He said the dialogue is meant to guard against shared risks and "prevent a misunderstanding between our two systems."

"We also expect to exchange best practices for evaluating and testing advanced models before their release, and for keeping human judgment firmly in command of this technology," Bessent said, adding that the two sides had agreed to set up a direct channel for alerting each other to serious incidents.

Competition and responsibility

Trump and Xi agreed on the AI alert system at their White House meeting in September, though Trump also said at the time that he was reluctant to add new guardrails because he wanted to preserve US leadership.

"As SI advances, so will the need to engage in new areas of risk management," Bessent said. "We should harbor no illusions about the differences between the United States and China. Our interests will not always coincide."

Reuters noted that Bessent's remarks made no mention of the controversy surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Bessent reiterated that the US aims to "de-risk, not to decouple" from trade with China. A fourth Trump-Xi meeting this year is expected in December at the G20 summit in Miami.

Sources: Reuters