US and China vie for AI supremacy at Trump-Xi summit

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet Thursday with artificial intelligence supremacy as a central agenda item, as both nations compete for global leadership in the technology while holding divergent views on its risks and governance. The US leads in frontier AI models from companies like Anthropic and Google, backed by massive investment and chip export restrictions on China, while Beijing focuses on open-weight models, cheaper energy access, and dominance in robotics manufacturing to gain economic and geopolitical leverage. The two governments differ sharply on safety, with Washington prioritizing innovation and deregulation while Beijing emphasizes human control and coordinated oversight, though both have discussed establishing a notification mechanism for serious AI incidents ahead of the summit.