At today's summit in Washington between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American host Trump, the development of AI will also be on the agenda. Both China and the US are keen to become the undisputed leader in the application of artificial intelligence. Such a position ultimately brings economic growth and power.
The meeting between Trump and Xi comes at a time of tensions between Beijing, Washington, and the American tech companies, which are currently leading the race. What is the status of that race, how does the American approach differ from the Chinese, and what can we expect today from Washington?
What do China and the US want to do with AI?
There is a difference there, but first we need to explain something about AI itself. It is a umbrella term for various types of tasks that computers perform and that require enormous computing power. With all that computing power, AI is much better and faster than older computer technology at recognizing patterns, analyzing situations, and creating new products and solutions.
At its core, both the American and Chinese governments believe that AI is crucial for economic competitiveness and national security. It partly stems from fear of falling behind economically or being dependent on each other's technology, that both countries are fully committed to their own AI development.
American companies emphasize imitating human intelligence as well as possible. This enables many commercial and government applications. Think of the use of facial recognition in security, or a system that can recognize and imitate human behavior such as bluffing for use in business negotiations.
Beijing, on the other hand, has a more practical approach. It tries to stimulate the development of many AI applications that immediately benefit society. With AI experiments in healthcare, education, and detecting financial fraud, the government wants to integrate AI into society.
How is China trying to become a leader in AI?
In China, AI development is driven by large companies innovating combined with strong government direction. The government provides subsidies and investments for companies that innovate as long as they fit government plans.
In addition, the Chinese government promotes open-source models. This means developers worldwide can use the Chinese models, making their use widespread and allowing the companies behind them to learn from the experiences.
Only when there is a threat that models are used in a way the Chinese government disagrees with will restrictions be imposed. What Beijing especially does not want is that the development and applications of AI endanger the Communist Party.
How is the US trying to become the world leader in AI?
Unlike China's heavily regulated approach, the market is given free rein in America. The government does not want to tightly regulate the playing field but rather create conditions so that various tech companies can innovate freely with AI. The attitude is mainly: try it, test your product in practice, making mistakes is allowed. The emphasis is strongly on speed, especially to stay ahead of China.
This is evident in how AI companies are treated when working on behalf of the US Department of Defense. When AI developer Anthropic earlier this year advocated for "guardrails" to prevent its own technology from being misused by the government, the Pentagon dropped the company like a stone. The department immediately opened a tender for Anthropic's competitors, causing it to lose a contract worth 200 million euros.
In addition, the US tries to ensure that China falls behind in terms of computing power of its computers. Washington does this by imposing global export restrictions on the most advanced chips and chip machines.
The Netherlands-based ASML knows all about this. The company from Veldhoven is one of many tech companies that have had to stop part of their sales to China because of this. For now, this approach works. When it comes to computing power, American AI companies are thought by Chinese experts to be up to six months ahead of their Chinese competitors.
What are the expectations for today's talks between Trump and Xi?
The US tech companies that recently again called for a safer approach, with guardrails and a slower pace of AI innovation, will probably not get their way. Trump does not find it opportune to lose the American lead over China in this way.
Xi also rejects their call, as he sees it as a disguised attempt to slow down Chinese innovation.
At the same time, Washington and Beijing are taking small steps to monitor AI safety and communicate about it. This past weekend, US Treasury Secretary Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He agreed to establish an AI safety mechanism. The newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party then wrote that AI "must become a new field for Sino-American cooperation."