Bessent says US has opened dialogue with China for more transparency in AI

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration has formalized talks with Beijing, called the USA-China AI Dialogues, to bring transparency and open communications between the American and Chinese artificial intelligence industries.“We think that, just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the No. 1 and the No. 2 AI powers in the world is very important,” Bessent told reporters on Sunday, following talks between the two world powers in New York City.Bessent elaborated on the progress of the talks in an interview with CNBC on Monday, saying, “The important thing was to start talking.” He added that the United States and China have agreed to meet again for more AI talks in Shenzhen, China, in November. “We want to open a communications line, an incident line, so that we have constant communications, especially in the event of some kind of an incident,” Bessent said. “Then we want to start discussing protocols for what our — so both sides can agree on what the leading AI dangers are: whether it’s uncontrollable agents, whether it’s non-state actors, and cyber non-state actors in bioweapons.”The bilateral AI meetings over the weekend came just ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House on Thursday. Beltway pundits expect Xi and President Donald Trump to address AI and the future of frontier AI model development as one of the main topics during their visit this week.China is the U.S.’s main competitor in the AI development race, though the U.S. currently has an edge on Beijing in the industry. Conversations surrounding rapid AI expansion hit a turning point last week, however, after a former Anthropic researcher put out a doomsday warning regarding frontier development. After the industry researcher warned that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” the CEOs of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceXAI all called for a national slowdown on model development and heavier regulations.The calls have forced lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to reckon with whether, and if so, how to regulate AI. Trump has pushed back against the calls for more guardrails and regulation in the industry, writing on Truth Social that “there is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”AI LEADERS TO ATTEND STATE DINNER WITH XI JINPING: REPORTBessent agreed with the president’s critical assessment of the industry leaders’ calls for regulation, telling CNBC that the AI industry is asking the government to take the “liability off of our hands,” responding with “we will not do that.”“What did they try to do last week? It was, ‘well, there’s a chance that, 10 % chance, we could destroy the world, but we want the government to give us a liability shield,'” Bessent said. “And, you know, that’s good business for them, bad business for the American people.”