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US President Donald Trump has dismissed mounting pressure to place limits on the pace of artificial intelligence development, insisting the country is not prepared to "put on brakes" on a technology he regards as central to America's competitive edge over China. The comments, delivered on Saturday as he departed the White House, place the administration at odds with a widening consensus among legislators, scientists and technology executives who argue that the race to build ever more powerful systems is outrunning any meaningful oversight.
Asked about calls for regulation, Trump pointed to a familiar catalogue of dismissed threats, invoking claims he has previously described as fabrications — the climate crisis and the probe into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russian agents. Casting the push to slow AI research in that company, he portrayed efforts at guardrails not as caution exercised by scientists but as an attempt to hold back a nation that, in his view, holds a commanding lead.
That framing carried an explicitly competitive subtext. "What they wanna do is stop our progress, because we're leading China by a lot," Trump said, adding that the gap would be preserved. The remark came days after the president wrapped up a three-day summit in Washington with Chinese President Xi Jinping — a meeting in which US lawmakers and outside experts had quietly hoped for a headline agreement on managing AI risk. That expectation did not materialise, and Trump conceded as much, saying the two governments did not devote much of their time to the subject.
The summit nonetheless produced one narrow outcome. On Friday, the White House said the United States and China had agreed to open a "bilateral communication channel" intended to be used for AI incidents — a modest mechanism for the two powers to warn each other about developments in the field. The announcement drew no immediate public reaction from Beijing, and the channel's practical significance remains unclear given that the president had spent the week rejecting the kind of substantive cooperation US officials had been seeking.
Trump said the AI portion of his private discussions with Xi focused largely on the terminology he prefers: "super intelligence," a term his administration announced on Tuesday it would use for artificial intelligence in official communications. The rebranding was welcomed in Beijing, with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying China "respects" Washington's switch in phrasing, after Trump noted that Xi appeared to favour the new wording. A Chinese ministry spokesperson, speaking separately, offered a more conventional formulation, saying AI technologies are developing continuously and that all parties can strengthen exchanges, discuss in-depth and seek consensus in light of the latest situation.
The contrast between the two capitals' language reflects a broader divergence in posture. Xi has struck a deliberately measured register, arguing that the technology must advance under human control. Trump, by contrast, has framed the issue almost exclusively as a race — one in which any pause would translate directly into lost ground. His stance also sits awkwardly beside his public insistence that the US is already far ahead, a claim that implies little urgency for either safety intervention or a bilateral deal with the country he says it has outrun.
That urgency has been pressed from several directions. During his final address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to put guardrails in place, warning that AI development pursued without accountability could put the planet at risk. Domestic actors have delivered a similar message: US lawmakers and chief executives of some of the country's largest technology firms have converged on the view that the pace of progress needs to be moderated, citing the technology's potential to endanger humanity.
Experts had specifically encouraged both Trump and Xi to use their Washington meeting as an occasion for a breakthrough on AI safety, and the absence of such an agreement drew criticism across Washington and beyond. Trump's remarks on Saturday deepened that disappointment by foreclosing the most ambitious version of cooperation. Asked whether the two countries should pool their efforts, he said he would rather not integrate, explaining that a leader does not open up its lead to others.
The summit was therefore more productive on symbolism and wording than on substance, and it leaves a set of unresolved questions. Whether the bilateral channel announced Friday develops into a functioning mechanism or remains largely declaratory is unclear. Trump indicated that Xi is expected to meet him twice more before the year is out, suggesting the administration expects to revisit the technology question in future encounters — though the president's Saturday comments offered little indication that his opposition to shared frameworks or domestic regulation has softened.
For businesses and regulators, the immediate implication is continuity rather than change. A White House that declines to slow development, and declines to integrate its research with a strategic rival, hands the debate back to a fragmented global landscape: national safety institutes, EU rules, Chinese state policy and voluntary corporate commitments proceed on separate tracks. Guterres's warning about accountability, and the unease among executives who have publicly called for restraint, remain unanswered by any binding framework agreed at the Washington summit. The conversation is likely to continue, but for now Washington has chosen speed over safeguards, and competition over collaboration.
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