WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump said artificial intelligence will be a “big topic of discussion” when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, but said both leaders wanted to leave things as they are.
“A big day with President Xi of China. Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is,” Trump wrote in a social media post, using his preferred term for artificial intelligence.
“That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ!” Trump said, referring to the Department of Justice.
Trump said last week that the United States already has guardrails in place to regulate and prosecute AI companies, appearing to play down concerns expressed by industry leaders about misuse of artificial intelligence harming people.
Xi’s visit to Washington comes after public alarm about the potential danger posed by AI was raised this month when an Anthropic researcher warned that people building it believed the technology could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade.
Despite apprehensions about its misuse, analysts say intense competition in AI is likely to limit the scope for anything beyond symbolic agreements.
Trump has so far resisted concerns about AI and has largely embraced tech companies in his second term. He said last week that critics of AI development were “playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen, and that could be political people, that could also be China.”
Some of the biggest names in American technology were expected to attend Trump’s state dinner at the White House on Thursday for Xi, including Amazon’s (AMZN.O) Jeff Bezos, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s (AAPL.O) Tim Cook, Tesla’s (TSLA.O) Elon Musk and Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) Jensen Huang.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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