中美就AI安全建立工作组并加强沟通

Stephen Engle, Bloomberg News chief, North Asia correspondent, covered the summit, and Shannon Kingston is ABC's new state department reporter, and she was here all week covering the UN. Stephen, I wanna start with you because in diplomatic worlds, one of the things everybody looks for is the readouts from these meetings. So you had the the Trump Xi meetings. You had a big state dinner. Had all this fanfare. Talk to us about what you saw that was different from what The US put out about it, what China put out about it, and what was missing because sometimes what is omitted is almost as important as what's put in the text.

Yeah. I think some of the comments on AI that they're absolutely willing to, one, accept the terminology that Donald Trump is gonna be using for AI, and that's superintelligence, and also thinks that they should be working together. That is in a bit of a contrast as far as the safety side of AI. China coming out saying they they attached the importance of The US imposition on AI and respects the use of superintelligence.

China seeks to strengthen communication, deepen discussions, and reach consensus as these technologies develop. And, again, Xi Jinping at this summit was a little bit more verbose about AI and the need to jointly, and they have the capability and the responsibility to put up these guardrails. Well, Donald Trump obviously has talked about some of those bigger goals about protecting mankind and the threat of AI and slowing down the pace of development of superintelligence as a bit of a hoax.

So, we'll have to see. Han Zhang speaking now. We understand he's going to be talking quite a bit about AI, so we'll be looking for some headlines. Han Zhang, sort of taking Xi Jinping's place at the podium there at the UN. He is the vice president, but he's also the guy who who greeted Donald Trump at the Beijing Airport in May. He's the vice president, former, Politburo standing committee member. So he's not on the highest rate, you know, super powerful, Politburo standing committee of the seven power most powerful men in China, but still with the title of vice president.

So we'll have to hear what he has to say. He's basically standing in instead of Xi Jinping there at the UN general assembly. Monitoring the terminal for headlines, as we continue this conversation. Shannon, let me turn to you, and I'm curious how you see these two events in complement. So we had the president of The United States making the journey to New York and delivering a speech. We don't have the Chinese president doing that.

What did it say to you having these happen in tandem? And indeed, there is this conversation that's been taking place in New York about AI, but it does seem like the the locus of it, the focus of it, what was seen as most important was the conversation that presumably took place in and around the White House, in Washington. Yeah. That's right. And when it comes to this very consequential relationship between The US and China, Christine was absolutely right.

What goes on said is just as important. So when we look at president Xi's decision not to speak before the UN, there's a little more there than meets the eye because there has been an almost obsessive, like, focus by both countries on reciprocity, making sure the terms are exactly equal. So when president Trump went to Beijing earlier this year, that was just an out and back trip. They made sure of that. And so when president Xi came to The US now, they didn't want to create the perception or allow for the image that, hey.

You know, he was just stopping by in Washington while he was already there for the United Nations. They wanted to really put a different spotlight on this. So these conversations on AI or superintelligence, you know, unclear to me if that term is going to take off yet. A lot of it has been, you know, very nascent early stages between The US and China. They're talking about setting up a working group, you know, talking about information sharing.

But what is going to be just as important as getting those systems up and running is establishing trust. So the criticism that the state visit was maybe all pomp and circumstance, not enough substance, there is still, you know, a feeling from a lot of experts and officials in this space that building the relationship is really, you know, not a waste of time because that trust is going to be, oh, you know, what really defines the moment at the end of the day.

And, Stephen, when you're looking at what Shannon was just talking about, this desire to have these two on equal footing, have the trips be perceived as equal durations, equal of importance, There was an interesting dynamic playing out with the media coverage of this because president Trump was having a spat with one of or several, actually, of The US TV pool members and some of the reporters, and that impacted who could get in to cover the state dinner.

And I was reading that this was covered much more heavily with the imagery in Chinese state media, and it, you know, it was all over the front pages of of the communist main newspaper there in Beijing. And, you know, it was a little a little less spectacular here in The US, partially because of access issues and then partially because there was also a lot going on, with the UN. But I'm wondering how those trips were received on both sides of the world.

Yeah. If you look at the media coverage, it is interesting because I was there on the North Lawn of the White House on two consecutive days, including the days of the summit. And I was listening to a lot of the domestic US coverage, and it was predominantly about the ban, and then the solidarity of the other, you know, towards CNN, Politico, and MS net now, and and maybe not as much detail about the summit itself. I found that striking coming from Asia where we cover the details, obviously, of the geopolitical relationship in quite great detail on policy and commercial ties.

But that being said, the fact that there wasn't a lot of Chinese, corporation or executives in that dinner, made it little maybe less important on the commercial side. But I agree with Shannon completely that the Chinese side, the business or the the government officials that were there and the focus of this summit was clearly on showing Xi Jinping as being an equal to The United States and being treated as an equal as well.

So that was probably the main goal of this fairly short visit, but I think they ticked all the boxes. And I talked to a number of the CGTN reporters. They had a large contingent. That's the international arm of China Central Television state media. They had a pretty big, contingent here as well as two camera crews on last weekend at outside the, JPMorgan Chase headquarters where Huly Feng and Scott Bessent met for trade advanced talks to kinda lay the deliverables, for the summit on Thursday.

They have a big contingent here. Steve, let me pick up on that. And I wanna ask you just about president Xi's motivations in coming to to The US, and there was a piece that the Simpson Center, a think tank, put out showing the decline in president Xi's travel in in recent years, certainly since the the COVID pandemic. I I'm curious why that is the case, what the speculation is that he's not traveling as much. Perhaps it's just that world leaders are traveling to China more than they had been before.

But what does it say that he's made the effort to come here? Indeed, there's gonna be this trip that president Trump is gonna take to China before, this meeting of the g twenty in in Doral in in Florida. How how did the from a Chinese lens, how important was this trip making this pilgrimage to Washington? Was that for Shannon Rea? Guess If I could. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. I'll pick up on that. I I think this was incredibly important, and he did also have some diplomatic outreach in the weeks leading up to this.

I think he'd be went to India as well as as another trip. I t