Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Prospects for AI safety measures appear dim ahead of the U.S.-China summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the BRICS summit in India, and China moves to replenish its oil stockpiles.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Prospects for AI safety measures appear dim ahead of the U.S.-China summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the BRICS summit in India, and China moves to replenish its oil stockpiles.

Can the U.S. and China Cooperate on AI Safety?

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington on Sept. 24, and artificial intelligence safety is likely high on the agenda.

Many analysts hope that China and the United States might cooperate to set basic international principles for governing the technology despite their geopolitical rivalry—much as the Soviet Union and United States ultimately cooperated during the Cold War on nuclear arms control, polio eradication, and protecting the ozone layer.

China has reportedly threatened to cancel the summit if the United States goes ahead with arms sales to Taiwan beforehand, but that sounds like routine diplomatic noise to me. Even if the meeting goes ahead, the chances of productive alignment on AI safety are low.

As I wrote last month, the two countries have fundamentally different understandings of AI risk. While the U.S. tech elite is preoccupied with sci-fi scenarios involving singularity and machine gods, Chinese bureaucrats operate within a tradition of cybernetics that is more concerned with technical failures and the political and economic consequences of new technologies.

Simply put, if you think the central AI problem is “control the emergence of superintelligence,” your approach will differ from someone whose concern is “prevent........

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