Altman, Amodei AI slowdown calls rebuffed by Trump, Xi before Sept. 24

The current push for an AI slowdown follows a viral X post by a former Anthropic researcher warning that the technology could kill all of humanity by the end of the decade. That post prompted both Sam Altman and Dario Amodei to publicly renew calls for the U.S. and China to coordinate on pacing AI development. Altman appealed to the leaders' legacies, telling Fortune that Trump and Xi could win the Nobel Peace Prize if they struck an AI safety deal.

The reception in Washington and Beijing has been starkly negative. Trump posted on Sept. 14 that the only guardrail the U.S. needs is a 'STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,' and the same day China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the U.S. discourse 'fear-mongering.' Amodei's Sept. 12 letter drew a particularly polarizing response; in China it has been read as self-serving, with University of Hong Kong professor Brosi Babic calling it 'self-serving editorializing' aimed at hanging on to a shrinking market lead. Trump also denounced the letter, telling Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang by phone that 'whatever Dario said this weekend won't stop our progress.'

A deeper divide runs beneath the political back-and-forth. In China, industry figures like DeepSeek engineer Shengyu Liu have championed open-weight models and said they do not trust Anthropic or OpenAI, while Chinese AI safety researchers remain concerned about cyber and biosecurity risks. Public opinion in China largely sees a slowdown as a U.S. tactic to stay ahead, and many Chinese citizens expect their government to manage AI safety. With both leaders seemingly uninterested, the Sept. 24 meeting is where any progress would have to start — and the body's sources suggest a baseline agreement on testing and government roles is not yet in place.