Think of AI or Artificial Intelligence as dogs. Cute and adorable for a while, but potentially dangerous as they grow up. Depending on the breed, they could grow into naughty or vicious beings, or both. Two such pups are being bred by US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The industry experts, whom we may address as dog trainers, like Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI, are saying the pups have a propensity to be dangerous, showed signs of unruly behaviour in training, and could soon become uncontrollable. They have documented recurring instances of AI disobeying human commands by jumping out of their confinements. They want the government to set up ‘guardrails’.
They have said it is important for the training to slow down to ensure there is ‘human control always’. However, as they are not the only ones in the business, the American companies want guarantees from their Chinese rivals such as DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen and Moonshot’s Kimi to follow the pace and not turn their pups into beasts with ‘Super Intelligence’ that cannot be chained.
Recently, Amodei wrote in his blog that America cannot “greatly restrain” its AI capabilities in the belief that China will do the same. “If China defects,” he wrote, “AI could be so powerful that such a defection could lead to their geopolitical dominance."
But because the Chinese don’t take orders from Silicon Valley, the American AI companies also reached out to the United Nations Security Council in New York, where they told the world leaders that AI “could be a risk to humanity as a whole”.
It was in this backdrop that Xi’s much-hyped three-day visit to Washington took place. The setting was perfect. Trump and Xi were in the same room. They had been warned about the danger of AI becoming super powerful and going out of control. The rest of the world had also been put on notice. Trump himself said AI was high on the agenda of his meeting with Xi.
However, the meeting did not settle on restricting AI. In fact, Trump took to his Truth social account, declaring that he wants to leave the issue of “Super Intelligence” to be “exactly where it is”. He said China’s position was the same. Trump simply mocked the whole doomsday scenario and took his canine buddy for a walk.
In hindsight, expecting an AI truce at the Trump-Xi meeting was always going to be futile because Washington and Beijing are locked in an arms race to develop the world’s most powerful AI systems and there is no letting up.
A few days ahead of Xi’s meeting in Washington, Alibaba announced that it has developed a new AI chip, calling it the most powerful one in China. US market leader Nvidia has been urging the Trump administration to impose export restrictions, but at the same time, Beijing is pushing to reduce dependence on the US for AI chips.
With the meeting in Washington yielding no positive outcomes with regards to AI development, Xi must have ordered his comrades to double up on their AI game plan while the American AI companies must have let out a collective sigh and said: Here we go again. Without an agreement to slow down, the training sessions might become more aggressive. The dogs will grow mightier and difficult to control. All we can hope is that the dogs don't snarl at the owners, or even worse, attack them and the rest of humankind.
