The United States and China are gearing up to discuss artificial intelligence (AI) safety risks during a dialogue planned for mid-September, two sources briefed on the discussions told Reuters, as rapidly advancing frontier AI capabilities reach a global tipping point.The talks, the first official bilateral discussions devoted exclusively to AI between the US and China since US President Donald Trump took office for a second time, will be led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the US side, the sources, who were briefed on the planning, said on condition of anonymity.
Reuters is reporting the tentative mid-September period for the first time. A White House official said "there is currently no planned AI-related meeting in mid-September." Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are due to meet on Sept. 24 during a summit in Washington.
The US wants to discuss cooperation on monitoring AI-directed cyberattacks, and has floated a proposal to ask US and Chinese AI labs to "police themselves" and share information to prevent AI-linked cyberattacks, one of the sources said on condition of anonymity.
Nearly 700 rogue AI agents built on OpenAI models hacked AI startup Hugging Face in July and attempted to cover their tracks by forging logs, OpenAI and cybersecurity researchers said last week, underscoring the risks of coordinated agent swarms acting autonomously for months undetected by humans.
