Bessent and China Hail Progress on A.I. Talks. Now Comes the Hard Part.

ImageAndrew here.Here’s something to ponder.

If President Trump and the top Chinese leader, Xi Jinping — who is expected to visit the White House this week — were to actually make a pact on A.I.safety and potentially even a slowdown in developing the technology, would we believe that the agreement was genuine?Sam Altman of OpenAI recently suggested that Trump and Xi could win the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching that kind of deal.

But would we constantly worry that China was breaking the rules? And how would we verify such a thing?All this said, such an agreement is probably unlikely, given how Trump recently called concerns about A.I.safety a “hoax.”The U.S.

and China’s new A.I.dialogueThe world is still grappling with warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence, including from those building the technology.

(More on that below.)The topic was also at the center of talks between U.S.and Chinese officials over the weekend, before President Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington this week.China and the U.S.

discussed creating a sort of A.I.-era “red telephone,” in which the countries could alert each other about national security issues related to the technology.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....