Trump to host Xi as Congress weighs ban on artificial superintelligence
US President Donald Trump is meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday as part of a three-day state visit expected to focus heavily on artificial intelligence, while lawmakers in Washington push a bill to ban AI superintelligence development.
Donald Trump is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, at the start of a three-day state visit to the United States. Xi departed Beijing by special plane on Wednesday, accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan, senior aide Cai Qi and foreign minister Wang Yi, according to Chinese state media. Trump is expected to greet him at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Artificial intelligence is expected to feature prominently in their talks.
UN secretary-general António Guterres has urged the two countries to open a dialogue on AI comparable to US-Soviet communication during the Cold War, arguing that nations with the greatest AI capabilities carry the greatest responsibility to ensure transparency, trust and cooperation.
A state dinner is reportedly planned at the White House on Thursday evening, with several prominent technology executives expected to attend, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
Separately, two progressive lawmakers — Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar — are preparing to introduce legislation that would ban the development of artificial superintelligence and establish a new federal Department of Artificial Intelligence to oversee advanced AI systems. The bill would also pause advanced AI development until safety guidelines are put in place. Several employees at major AI companies have voiced support for the proposal. Sanders said it doesn't take a genius to conclude that development should be slowed, questioning whether society truly wants to build a superintelligence capable of acting independently of human control once it surpasses human intelligence. Congress has so far taken little action to regulate the AI industry, even as some of its most prominent figures have warned of potentially catastrophic risks.
