WASHINGTON, September 29 (Reuters) – The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said on Tuesday morning that he does not wish to cooperate with Chinese President Xi Jinping in regulating artificial intelligence technology, adding that doing so would make it harder for American companies to develop AI products that are better than those of their Chinese rivals.
“We are ahead of China and everyone else, and I want that to continue,” Trump said at an event in Washington on Tuesday morning.
Trump also said that he discussed AI with Xi when the Chinese president visited the United States last week, adding that the United States already works with Xi’s government “in many ways.”
Pressure on the Trump administration to address AI risks to the public is mounting after OpenAI and Anthropic reported that their AI agents had acted autonomously and breached clients’ systems without receiving instructions to do so. The breaches led researchers to warn that some AI developers believe the technology could kill humans within a decade, fueling calls for action from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Trump will also meet this Tuesday at the White House with executives from the technology sector to discuss AI technology. Dario Amodei of Anthropic; Mark Zuckerberg of Meta; Sundar Pichai of Google; Jensen Huang of Nvidia; Alex Karp of Palantir; and Greg Brockman of OpenAI are expected to attend, according to company spokespeople and sources familiar with the meeting plans. On the Trump side, technology adviser Michael Kratsios and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will be present, as well as the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
The meeting will focus on finding a balance between innovation and oversight, Johnson said on Monday, as concerns about the potential for rogue AI agents to harm humans have entered public awareness, intensifying calls for regulation. Trump dismissed concerns about the AI threat to humanity as a “farce.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting’s objectives or topics.
