U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state dinner attended by the chief executives of Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX and other major tech firms, with AI as a key topic of conversation. China's readout described a friendly tone on AI cooperation, but unresolved chip export controls and reports of Chinese firms accessing Nvidia hardware overseas remain flashpoints.
Trump and Xi sat down for talks on Thursday with AI as a central topic, then hosted a state dinner attended by Nvidia's Jensen Huang, SpaceX's Elon Musk, AMD's Lisa Su and Apple's Tim Cook, alongside OpenAI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. The gathering came as safety concerns about advanced AI have climbed to the top of the global geopolitical agenda in recent weeks.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social that Super Intelligence would be a big topic of discussion, adding he wanted to leave the issue where it stood and that China held the same position.
China frames the talks as cooperation
A Chinese readout of the meeting said Xi told Trump the two countries may compete but may cooperate even more in AI. According to CNBC: "AI must be kept under human control.", Xi said, per the readout, adding the two sides should keep talking, exchange views on AI's risks and benefits, and jointly guard against its misuse. Trump, the Chinese account said, agreed the two sides should maintain dialogue and strengthen cooperation on AI; the U.S. government had not issued its own readout as of publication.
The talk of cooperation follows U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's discussion of a US-China AI dialogue with his Chinese counterpart, He Lifeng, over the weekend, including a channel for incidents up to a national security level. That channel has been compared to the Cold War-era "red phone" line between Washington and Moscow.
Export controls remain a sticking point
Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the meeting appeared to produce an intent to continue dialogue along with a hotline for emergencies. But he cautioned the hotline would need real commitment and high-level engagement from both sides to become a robust tool.
Despite the friendly tone in China's readout, U.S. export controls restricting China's access to advanced Nvidia chips remain a sticking point, along with reported remote access by Chinese companies to Nvidia chips through overseas data centers and American claims of AI model distillation. Neither side has confirmed whether the summit produced specific commitments on these issues.
Source: CNBC
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