Trump Says No New AI Guardrails Planned With China

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would discuss superintelligence with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but doesn’t want to introduce any new guardrails on artificial intelligence (AI).

“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 said in a Truth Social post. “That is China’s position also.”

“Our guardrail is the DOJ!” he added, referring to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump’s comment came shortly before he hosted Xi at the White House. The Chinese Communist Party leader landed in Washington for a two-day state visit on Wednesday evening. 

Concerns are growing inside and outside the industry as reports emerge about increasingly powerful systems that solve problems beyond human capacity but could also go rogue and carry out other, more harmful tasks.

Trump has largely pushed back against calls for AI guardrails, calling them “a sick conspiracy” surrounding the technology that would only benefit China in the AI development race.

Ahead of the leaders’ summit, the United States and China have agreed to set up a formal AI dialogue, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced after a day of talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday. 

“We’ve now formalized something called the USA–China AI dialogues. We’ve agreed to meet again probably in two months in Shenzhen,” Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

Bessent said the two sides also agreed to set up “an incident line” to ensure ongoing communication on AI, especially in the event of safety incidents.

Following the discussions with Chinese officials in Washington ahead of Xi’s arrival, Bessent said China is “very eager” to engage with U.S. officials on AI.

“Because the U.S. is substantially in the lead. China is behind us,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox News.

“We’re working to define with them what we think the most important—or the most perilous—risk factors are, whether it’s uncontrolled AI agents, or whether it’s non-state actors using AI either for cyber operations or for biologics.”

China’s commerce ministry spokesperson confirmed at a press briefing on Thursday that Beijing and Washington had their first dialogue on AI.

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.