Bessent urges 'clear-eyed' US-China AI cooperation amid competition
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the US and China should have no illusions about their differences on artificial intelligence as they work to mitigate risks and compete for supremacy. He announced a new bilateral dialogue on 'superintelligence' during a speech in New York ahead of a Trump-Xi
United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that the United States and China should harbour no illusions about their differences on artificial intelligence as they navigate cooperation to mitigate the technology's risks while competing for AI supremacy.
Speaking in prepared remarks to the National Committee on US-China Relations in New York, Bessent said he wanted to 'build a constructive relationship on the basis of balance and reciprocity'. He will travel to China next week for President Donald Trump's third meeting this year with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The meeting in Shenzhen, to be held on the sidelines of the 18-19 November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit, will advance a new bilateral dialogue on 'superintelligence', or SI, Bessent said, using the Trump administration's preferred term for the technology. The dialogue is meant to guard against shared risks and 'prevent a misunderstanding between our two systems,' Bessent said.
'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,' he said, adding the two sides had agreed to establish a direct channel for alerting each other to serious incidents. Trump and Xi agreed on the new AI alert system during their previous meeting at the White House in September, but Trump at the time also said 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 — and to demonstrate how two nations can reconcile the demands of competition with the responsibilities of leadership,' Bessent said. 'As we do so, we should harbor no illusions about the differences between the United States and China. As I stated earlier, our interests will not always coincide. And our approach to every challenge, likewise, will not always converge.'
Bessent also referred to other trade initiatives agreed during the two previous Trump-Xi summits, including the establishment of a 'Board of Trade' to determine mutual tariff cuts on US$30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction, and China's pledged purchases of US farm goods. A similarly structured 'Board of Investment' will provide a structured forum for issues including market access for American companies in China and 'increased predictability for Chinese companies,' he said. He reiterated that the US trade deficit with China remains a source of friction, but the US objective is to 'de-risk, not to decouple' from trade with China.
Bessent's remarks made no mention of the controversy surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is facing an investigation by the AI chipmaker's board after a New York Times report that he had an affair with a businesswoman suspected by US security services of being a Chinese intelligence asset. China's foreign ministry has called the spying accusations 'groundless' and 'a smear.' Nvidia has said its board has no reason to believe US national security or company secrets were compromised and that Huang has committed to cooperating with the internal review.