The White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week ended without any breakthrough agreement on artificial intelligence, though the two leaders agreed on a new name for the technology both say they favour.
Trump told reporters outside the White House on September 26 that the United States would not slow down its AI development. "The United States of America is not going to be putting on brakes," he said, estimating that the US leads China in the technology by a year or two.
What the two sides said
During the visit, Xi said on September 24 that the US and China must "ensure that the development of AI is always under human control." Trump, however, played down the need for joint guardrails. "They want to stop our progress because we're leading China by a lot, and we're going to keep it that way," he said. "We didn't spend that much time talking about it. I would rather not integrate because we're leading by a lot. When you're leading, you don't open it up to each other."
The one point of agreement, according to Trump, was terminology. "I say this that superintelligence, SI, I don't call it AI anymore," he told reporters, adding that "we had a big talk on SI, and he likes the idea of changing the name to SI, too."
Pressure to act had come from across the political divide. A week before the visit, democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and conservative Trump ally Steve Bannon appeared at the same Washington, D.C. event and urged the president to use the meeting to slow AI development.
Tech CEOs at the state dinner
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a lavish state dinner for the Chinese delegation, and artificial intelligence leaders featured prominently among the guests. The guest list included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Apple chairman Tim Cook, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Altman and Musk have both recently called for greater oversight of AI.
Trump dismisses safety warnings
At the United Nations General Assembly earlier in the week, Trump said he would not "stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution," arguing that the US was leading China in the technology. He also described AI safety warnings as a "hoax," comparing them to climate change projections with the remark, "you're all supposed to be dead now because of global warming."
Beijing offered its own summary of the visit. China said the two sides had agreed on a $30 billion reciprocal tariff-reduction arrangement and on launching a dialogue on AI under an eight-point consensus, adding that a trade council would be set up and that the outcomes of earlier talks in Kuala Lumpur would be extended.
Sources:
No breakthrough AI agreement between Trump and Xi during US-China summit — USA Today
Top news of the day, September 26, 2026 — The Hindu
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