Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on May 14, 2026, from Beijing that the United States and China will hold the first formal AI safety discussions of President Trump’s second term. The talks will focus on protocols to prevent powerful AI models from reaching nonstate actors such as hackers and terrorists. Bessent offered no start date for the negotiations.
Promising! US and China will start discussing AI safety, according to Bessent.
Much more news than a potential Boeing deal out of China this AM.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/world/asia/china-us-ai-safety.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Some users welcomed US-China AI safety talks as a promising development for tangible guardrails negotiated from strength, while others mocked the framing as evasive or misguided and dismissed Trump as unreliable.
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#682President Trump answering an AI policy question on Air Force One:
President Trump: 'We talked. We're leading, by a lot. But they're second, and they're very strong. And we talked about possibly working together for guardrails.'
Reporter: what kind of guardrails?
President Trump: 'The standard guardrails that we talk about all the time. AI is fantastic. So many things can happen in terms of health, and medicine. Operations. Everything. Military. So many things can happen. But it's also got some drawbacks. And we're talking about... We probably will, we're going to work together.'
> President Xi was very surprised at how well we've done with AI. When it started, they took this gigantic lead
what is bro talking about? Is it something about Sleepy Joe's sins again, declining America Trump has rescued?
.@POTUS: "We are leading China by a lot in the AI race... and we’re going to win it... President Xi was very surprised at how well we've done with AI. When it started, they took this gigantic lead, and now, we are substantially ahead of them in AI."
Trump and Xi are now talking about AI guardrails
Q: On artificial intelligence, what did you get done with President Xi?
TRUMP: We talked about possibly working together for guardrails. We probably will work together. We discussed almost everything you could discuss except for a reduction of tariffs.
https://youtu.be/XVfi6_wcx_8?si=-1SVCAfNQnTgA7Em
President Trump answering an AI policy question on Air Force One:
President Trump: 'We talked. We're leading, by a lot. But they're second, and they're very strong. And we talked about possibly working together for guardrails.'
Reporter: what kind of guardrails?
President Trump: 'The standard guardrails that we talk about all the time. AI is fantastic. So many things can happen in terms of health, and medicine. Operations. Everything. Military. So many things can happen. But it's also got some drawbacks. And we're talking about... We probably will, we're going to work together.'
Bessent yesterday: 'The two Al superpowers are going to start talking. We're going to set up a protocol in terms of how do we go forward with best practices for Al to make sure nonstate actors don't get a hold of these models.'
@ShakeelHashim @vwang3 The full interview
@ShakeelHashim @vwang3 Reuters covered it as well
@AndrewCurran_ industries usually spend decades begging regulators to stay out. AI's the first one asking for the protocol to be coordinated at the head-of-state tier
@AndrewCurran_ Patrick Star level intelligence on display
@AndrewCurran_ good development honestly, hopefully something tangible and effective comes out of it
I’ve been a proponent of the U.S. aiming to negotiate from a position of strength with China on AI guardrails, rather than either pure racing with no hope of negotiating or favoring diplomacy while taking U.S. racing off the table. Bessent’s comments support this approach
@AndrewCurran_ @Miles_Brundage for the future of all humans!
@AndrewCurran_ he's not about to tell a reporter anything that can be spun into something that'll sell papers and that isn't what was actually said
@AndrewCurran_ It's this the ELI5?
@AndrewCurran_ Bessent: “to make sure nonstate actors don't get a hold of these models”
The threat is state actors, (CCP, DoW with Palantir), not nonstate actors, (Moonshot, DeepSeek, TenCent, Baidu, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic).
@ShakeelHashim @vwang3 Times is on it
@teortaxesTex first rule of Trump, never listen to Trump. He doesnt even know what he is going to say next.
@AndrewCurran_ As expected, uyou can already see that AI is being treated as the weapon that it is. There will be (or already are) models for the general public and and models for defense.
@teortaxesTex 😂😂
@peterwildeford this is such an obvious question dodge lmao. this is like when they asked him his favorite bible verse and he said it was too personal and then said he liked new and old testament "equal"