Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says the US will work with China on AI safety, despite trade tensions
Biden adviser says the two nations must work together to tackle risks from artificial intelligence despite race to dominate its development
Context & Ripple Effects
The statement extends a U.S. risk-management agenda that had already included new federal AI-safety research and agency-use guidelines. It also echoes Sam Altman's call for China to help shape global AI-safety guidelines, while locating that cooperation inside a broader U.S.-China technology rivalry.
Its importance is the separation it attempts to make: competition over AI development need not preclude dialogue on harms that cross national borders.
First-order effects
- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy publicly positions AI safety as a potential area for U.S.-China engagement even as wider trade tensions persist.
- U.S. and Chinese policymakers gain political cover to discuss shared AI-risk issues without presenting such contact as a retreat from technological competition.
Second-order effects
- AI companies and safety researchers operating across both policy environments have a stronger rationale to press for interoperable risk-management practices, even if the governments retain different domestic rules.
- The split between safety cooperation and technology competition makes AI diplomacy more compartmentalized: progress on one track need not resolve disputes over trade or industrial capacity.
Third-order effects
- If sustained, this model would make AI safety a domain of selective bilateral governance within an era of AI sovereignty, rather than a precursor to broader technology détente.
- The durability of that arrangement remains uncertain: it depends on whether both governments can define shared risks narrowly enough to cooperate while pursuing competing AI strategies.
The trend: AI governance is moving toward selective cooperation on cross-border risks alongside increasingly national competition over AI capability and industrial control.