Will Artificial Intelligence Take Over Trump-Xi Jinping Talks? US President cites DOJ ‘railing’, says ‘I want to leave it right where it is’ | Today’s news
US President Donald Trump said artificial intelligence is expected to feature prominently in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, while suggesting neither side wants to change its current approach to the technology.
Trump said in a social media post that he would have a “big day” with Xi and that “super intelligence (SI)” would be discussed during their talks. But he added that he wants to “leave it exactly where it is.”
According to Trump, China shares the same opinion on the matter. “This is also China’s position. Our guardrail is the DOJ!” he said, referring to the US Department of Justice.
What did Trump say earlier?
Trump said last week that the US already has safeguards in place to oversee AI companies and take legal action against them if necessary. His remarks appeared to downplay concerns raised by tech industry leaders about the potential misuse of AI and its potential impact on humans.
On September 13, Trump sat down with “very negative forces” fueling fears about AI that he did not expect to materialize, while stressing the importance of the US maintaining its global lead in AI.
Trump said Washington is currently ahead of China in the AI race and argued that maintaining that advantage is important. His comments were in response to questions from reporters about whether the artificial intelligence industry should be subject to stricter regulations or whether its development should be slowed.
It follows calls from executives at some of the world’s biggest AI companies for the industry to rethink the pace at which its most advanced and commercially valuable models are being developed, amid growing concerns about the potential risks the technology poses.
“We lead in China in artificial intelligence. We are the most sophisticated country in the world and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins artificial intelligence wins,” Trump told reporters, according to Reuters.
“We could put up barriers. We can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of very negative forces that are causing this that shouldn’t be going up and causing things that aren’t going to happen,” he added.
Trump has been widely supportive of technology companies during his second term. He said last week that critics of the development of artificial intelligence were “playing right into the hands of a lot of people who don’t want it to happen, and that could be political people, that could be China.”
Tech leaders are set to attend a White House dinner
Meanwhile, Trump’s state dinner for Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday was expected to be attended by several prominent figures in the US technology industry. The guest list was expected to include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
