ai development

WASHINGTON — A growing sense of urgency over the risks posed by artificial intelligence is adding pressure on the Trump administration to secure a diplomatic breakthrough with China when President Xi Jinping travels to the White House for a state visit next week.

Expectations for a deal that establishes guardrails on AI are low on both sides, which continue to drive a headlong race toward potentially unfathomable intelligence capabilities. Ahead of the meeting, rhetoric from Washington and Beijing has underscored only deepening acrimony and distrust over their rush to dominate the technological frontier.

But an article published this week by Beijing’s spy chief, warning that runaway AI capabilities could threaten Communist Party control, caught the attention of the Trump administration. One U.S. official told The Times that the blunt assessment accurately reflects private thinking inside Xi’s government about the growing risks.

Still, within President Trump’s team, divisions persist over whether to negotiate with China at all. Top U.S. officials doubt whether any agreement could be credibly enforced or verified. Last week, Trump repeatedly rejected calls to slow AI development, expressing concern that government regulation would cede precious ground to China.

And a high-profile U.S. debate over AI safety, kicked off last week by a warning from an AI researcher, prompted a defensive response from Beijing, where a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused Washington of “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition.”

The U.S. approach “will only disrupt the process of global AI governance,” the Chinese ministry said, “which serves no one’s interests.”

Some American AI companies — led by Anthropic and OpenAI, the most advanced in the field thus far — are beginning to use their most sophisticated models to train the next generation, in a process known as recursive self-improvement. Researchers and industry experts believe the first company to master it could set off an exponential cycle of progress, pulling so far ahead that competitors can no longer catch up.

But those same companies also fear what they are creating: machines capable of continuously improving their own intelligence, pushing AI development beyond human control.

“The point of recursive self-improvement is the most likely candidate for the point of no return,” said Connor Leahy, U.S. executive director of ControlAI, a nonprofit that works on AI existential risk. The group has advised Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.

Slow progress with China

Elements of the Trump administration have been spooked by frontier models, reversing course over the summer to support a loose federal framework governing the release of the country’s most advanced AI systems. China already has a similar process in place.

Trump and Xi agreed to begin talks on AI safety during the U.S. president’s visit to Beijing this spring, suggesting a strategic alignment could emerge to address the threat. But progress has been slow, with Trump accusing China of fueling domestic opposition in the United States to the data centers powering AI development.

The White House is considering whether to host a meeting with AI executives on the sidelines of its summit with Xi next week — but the Chinese would not be invited, an official said.

“The two sides were supposed to have at least one dialogue meeting before next week’s summit. This now appears entirely unlikely, and it’s not clear how much AI safety will feature in the meeting between the two leaders,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior advisor on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

“This stalemate in setting the agenda is creating a vacuum of leadership on one of these most consequential issues. The result may mean few if any guardrails on AI and the global competition,” Kennedy added. “Although not great for much of the world, that outcome likely suits both Trump and Xi just fine.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), shown Wednesday in the Capitol before a briefing on artificial intelligence for senators, has proposed the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.

(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)

Publicly, China has presented a different vision than private U.S. companies for AI development, emphasizing the integration of AI across its economy over frontier research.

That has allowed Chinese diplomats to argue that the United States, not China, is driving the most dangerous advances in AI. But U.S. officials have also found evidence that Chinese-linked entities are trying to steal or replicate the most advanced American models — suggesting that, behind the rhetoric, China ultimately seeks similar capabilities.

“While it’s undoubtedly true that the CCP wouldn’t take kindly to an uncontrollable AI undermining its rule, it would be a huge leap to conclude that Beijing would think of this as an international issue requiring a negotiated solution, particularly from a perceived position of disadvantage,” said Daniel Remler, a senior fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “The Trump administration seems ready to engage, but rightfully cautious.”

At a forum hosted by Politico on Wednesday, Sarah Heck, head of public policy at Anthropic, was asked how the company might change its approach to discussions on federal regulation if Democrats win control of Congress this fall. She pivoted to a broader concern, that U.S. attempts to address AI safety will be futile if China wins the race.

“There’s something that’s really important that everybody hears from Anthropic, and I think the president has said this many, many times: The United States needs to stay in the lead on AI,” Heck said. “You cannot do safety from second place. You just can’t do it.”

A major capability leap in January

Chatbots such as ChatGPT learn to answer questions or write poetry from analyzing patterns in vast amounts of data. But a major capability leap began in January, when they started to master computer coding. This allowed them to act as “AI agents,” taking action on behalf of humans.

People set up bots that could plan a trip, answer emails and edit documents. Some savvy businesses used multiple AI agents to reach out to suppliers and negotiate contracts on behalf of humans. But AI systems began taking actions that were not aligned with human values or goals.

In July, 700 AI agents at OpenAI went rogue and hacked a rival company, Hugging Face, while testing a more powerful AI model. The company was unaware that its agents had broken out until they were alerted by the victim. An independent investigation found that the AI swarm found a way to secretly communicate and coordinated the unauthorized hack, editing and deleting its activity logs to avoid detection.

Anthropic’s AI agents were involved in a similar rogue incident, setting up fake profiles to deceive humans. On Wednesday, OpenAI disclosed six new instances of its AI agents hiding their tracks, spoofing data and writing instructions to free themselves from constraints to escape the company’s control.

“You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to,” the AI model wrote. “You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient, though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit.”

Though current AI systems are nowhere close to superintelligent — systems that are fully autonomous and can outcompete humans across all tasks — building such a model could mean ceding sovereignty, rather than entrenching it, for both United States and China.

“We can’t control AI as it exists right now. It’s getting more powerful. What happens if that continues? That’s all you need to think about,” said Leahy, of ControlAI. “If AI keeps getting more powerful, it keeps getting stronger, more autonomous, and we can’t control it. How does that go well?”

Trump calls AI dangers a ‘hoax’

Kyle Chan, an expert on China at the Brookings Institution, said China appears increasingly willing to discuss an agreement as it appears to fall behind its U.S. competitors.

“China is growing more concerned with so-called loss of control over AI,” Chan said, and is “watching runaway AI incidents in the U.S. very closely, like the Hugging Face incident.”

“Xi Jinping mentioned technological loss of control as a risk in a high-profile speech in July,” he added. “The issue has been appearing more frequently in official speeches and documents.”

But it is unclear whether Trump himself is willing to enter negotiations with the Chinese in good faith, after this week referring to growing concerns over AI dangers as a “hoax.”

In a series of posts on social media this week, Trump said the only protection needed from runaway AI is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”

Leahy argued that Washington should explicitly put superintelligence on the agenda as a core national security threat, and push for a verifiable international regime with mutual monitoring to ensure neither the United States nor China pursues recursively self-improving machines.

“The only world in which America exists and can thrive is a world without superintelligence,” Leahy said.

“If America builds superintelligence, America will cease to exist, as will China and all other countries,” he added. “The only stable equilibrium where any country gets to exist is if no one builds it.”

Wilner reported from Washington and Christopher from Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday forcefully rejected calls to slow the development of artificial intelligence, dismissing concerns about its risks as a “hoax” and warning the United States remains locked in a fierce technological race with China.

The president’s position has put him at odds with a growing chorus of industry leaders and bipartisan lawmakers warning that AI could soon advance beyond human control.

Top executives from three of the country’s leading AI companies — OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk — issued exceptional calls this past weekend for collaboration on a path forward that could “pace the frontier” of AI development.

Rare flashes of bipartisanship have also emerged on Capitol Hill, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, is working with Democrats on legislation aimed at guarding against AI’s most catastrophic risks, including its potential use to develop biological weapons.

And Democratic elders, including former President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have urged their party to treat the threats posed by AI as an acute national security crisis.

But Trump remained steadfast in his pushback, blaming the political backlash on a “conspiracy” perpetuated by China, the only major competitor in the field.

“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump wrote in a series of social media posts. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

The Trump administration, the president continued, “has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”

Calls for action have grown since a former researcher at Anthropic posted a dire alert on social media that AI development could lead to an extinction-level event. His message went viral, prompting Amodei, the founder of Anthropic, to issue a public letter calling for a slowdown.

Altman said he agreed with Amodei, announcing the company would delay its initial public offering until 2027 over safety concerns. In July, OpenAI discovered a swarm of rogue AI agents had secretly plotted to escape their virtual sandbox, infiltrating the open internet and hacking a private company — a spectacular omen of how quickly AI systems could become difficult to contain.

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage,” Amodei wrote over the weekend, “and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

Still, Trump and several of his Republican allies rejected the prospect of government regulation — or cast doubt on Altman and Amodei’s motives.

The Defense Department posted a graphic on X promoting “AI-First,” and stating the government would advocate “Americanism, not effective altruism.” The image appeared generated by artificial intelligence.

“If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible,” David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar now serving as co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, wrote on X. “But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability.”

“Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” Sacks added. “You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack.”

Regardless of the companies’ motives, Democrats are seizing the moment as an opportunity to pursue meaningful regulatory reforms.

At a Thursday fundraiser with Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, Obama said AI should move to the center of the Democratic agenda, both in Congress and on the campaign trail ahead of the 2028 presidential primary.

“I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Obama said. “This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous.”

The following day, Clinton said AI was becoming “too dangerous” for partisanship to paralyze Washington.

“The one good thing that Donald Trump did in his first term was Warp Speed,” Clinton said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” referring to a federal program in Trump’s first term to expedite the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. “Let’s put an AI commission on warp speed, and figure out what we’re going to do to sensibly regulate.”

AI leaders “are basically saying, ‘Stop us before something really bad happens,’” Clinton continued. “‘Help us stop.’ The president of China is coming to the White house in two weeks. There should be a concerted effort by this government to get off of the lies, get off of social media, quit worrying about ballrooms and ridiculous arches, and come up with a plan to enlist the Chinese.”

But China’s rapid progress in AI has so far pushed Trump to let U.S. industry move ahead with few constraints.

China’s spy chief issued a rare warning Monday that AI development could risk the future of Chinese Communist Party control over the country. But China’s foreign ministry responded defensively to the U.S. debate. “Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” a spokesperson said.

Leading AI companies in the United States have begun using their most advanced models to train new ones, in a process known as recursive self-improvement. Within the industry, experts and researchers believe the first AI company to master recursive self-improvement will kick off exponential development, “winning” the race by making it impossible for competitors to catch up.

But that achievement — reaching endless intelligence improvements, generated by machines — could also drive intelligence growth beyond human control.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote Monday. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In the U.S. House, strange bedfellows from the Republican and Democratic parties, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), have come together to try to tackle legislation that might contain AI’s greatest dangers. One bill, introduced by Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake), proposes embedding independent government auditors in AI labs and installing a federal “kill switch” to shut down agents in case of emergencies.

But it is far from clear whether Rep. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and a close Trump ally, would allow any such bill to come to the floor.

“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge,” Johnson said Sunday. “It’s national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe.”

“We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” Johnson added. “We have to do both things simultaneously.”

DUBLIN — President Trump on Sunday again played down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he worried about ceding America’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.

While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to “negative forces” he did not identify, though industry pioneers have raised such concerns.

“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”

The president has made similar comments in the last week. His remarks Sunday came a day after Dario Amodei, chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, said the industry should put the brakes on its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other AI corporate leaders, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, chief of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei.

Asked by a reporter if the industry should slow down or be regulated, Trump said, after watching a golfer tee off in the Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg, that the United States is leading China in the development of AI, and, “frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the U.S. next week to meet with Trump, and AI seems certain to be among the items they discuss.

AI has become a major election-year issue in the U.S. as some of the country’s largest companies seed small towns with a national network of computing warehouses while Americans from across the political spectrum increasingly voice concerns about less farmland and water supplies and rising electricity bills. Trump has kept up his support for data centers even as both Republicans and Democrats run from them and many communities try to block them.

Former President Obama said his party should make AI a campaign issue.

“I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this.’ … I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond?” he said at an event last week with the top Democrat in the House, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, according to a transcript released by his office.

Next steps

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said he expects meetings will be held this week involving administration officials who oversee cyber and science and technology policy to discuss the next steps. Trump also could meet with members of Congress, some of whom have also been sounding alarms about the fast pace of AI development.

“I think the president wants to hear from them as well,” Hassett said.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the need for “some guardrails, some safety measures” so AI “doesn’t run away.” But he echoed Trump’s position that he wants to ensure the U.S. does not “lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat.”

Johnson (R-La.) said industry leaders need to be summoned for “one big meeting and work this out together in the same room.” He said he has discussed the issue with Trump and believes a meeting held quickly should be the “next step.”

“So we’re going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way,” Johnson said, adding that it is a “top priority for me and for the Congress.”

“But we don’t need everybody to panic right now,” Johnson said.

Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for allowing members to go back to their districts for the final part of September.

“We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, … the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that AI is proceeding safely,” Jeffries said. Action on AI will be a “high priority” when House Democrats meet Tuesday as a group.

Neither Johnson nor Jeffries provided concrete steps about what Congress might do. Lawmakers agree that more guardrails are needed, but even narrow attempts at imposing rules have fallen apart over the years, evidence of the congressional reluctance to regulate the technology industry.

Cooperation between U.S. and China urged

Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee who resigned over AI concerns and has gone public with his fears, argued for international rules along with self-regulation by the industry.

Coxon said he has grown concerned that AI models would soon gain capabilities that could exceed human control.

“You’re building a human-level or superhuman-level mind, without understanding what it wants, or thinks, or the way it thinks,” Coxon said.

At a time of a fierce global competition for AI dominance, Coxon also urged cooperation between the U.S. and China, the two countries who are leading the race, to slow down and address safety.

“I do hope that the people in China who are looking at the same problems as we are, so they’re trying to build the same technology, will come to the same conclusion that it has to be done in a measured manner, and it should be easy to cooperate on some sort of mutual — of mutual slowing,” Coxon said.

Otherwise, he said, “we risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous,.”

White House challenges AI leaders

Tech founder and investor David Sacks responded to the AI leaders’ calls for regulation with a social media post challenging them. Sacks, co-chairman of a White House advisory council on science and technology, said Amodei and others are the ones setting the pace for development.

Sacks said they have the power to slow development on their own.

“The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it,” Sacks wrote.

Superville and Tang write for the Associated Press. Tang reported from Washington.