Bessent says the US has proposed an AI incident 'notification mechanism' with China ahead of the Trump-Xi talks
The Treasury secretary told reporters after weekend talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York that the world's two largest AI powers should move 'from opaque to more transparency' on incidents that touch national security.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the United States has proposed a new notification mechanism with China for artificial intelligence incidents that could affect national security. He described the proposal to reporters in New York after talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, part of weekend discussions ahead of a meeting at the White House this week between President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer appeared alongside him. Bessent said the goal was a shared vision of common goals and common threats. He compared AI to other cross-border activity and said moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and number two AI powers was very important. The Associated Press report does not describe how the mechanism would work, what would count as an incident, or whether Beijing has responded. The proposal arrives against a US stance that has otherwise rejected restraint. Trump has resisted calls to slow AI development, arguing that a slowdown would help China catch up with US companies. Beijing, for its part, rebuked Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei's call to curb Chinese AI development last week, as reported in prior coverage. A bilateral channel for reporting dangerous AI incidents would be the first concrete government-to-government AI safety arrangement to emerge from the current round of talks, if the two sides agree to it.