A three-day state visit between the United States and China ended on Friday without a major agreement on artificial intelligence, The Guardian reported. The largest concrete outcome from the summit was a two-month extension of a trade truce between the two countries.
Background
The summit brought together US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a moment when both countries’ AI industries are expanding quickly and each government has separately signalled interest in setting the pace of AI development, rather than slowing it.
Findings
Xi said both countries have a “responsibility to develop and manage AI for good”, and that they should “ensure that the development of AI is always under human control”. China has set itself the goal of next-generation smart terminals and AI agents reaching a penetration of more than 90 per cent by 2030, according to the report [1].
Trump, for his part, pushed to rebrand AI as “super intelligence”. Several US technology leaders, among them Elon Musk, AMD’s Lisa Su, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Apple’s Tim Cook, attended the state dinner; their Chinese counterparts were not present, the paper noted [1].
Representative Ro Khanna, who had proposed technical working groups between the two countries and a pause on self-improving AI, told The Guardian the summit fell short of what was possible: “It was such a layup” [1].
The only thing they seemed to agree about is that neither of them wants to slow down with this technology.
Jonathan Czin, Brookings Institution, quoted in The Guardian
Implications for Mac users
Set the geopolitics aside and one point stands out: neither of the world’s two largest AI powers is planning to slow down, and one of them has a stated target of more than 90 per cent penetration for next-generation smart terminals and AI agents by 2030. The AI labs themselves are separately debating whether to coordinate on safety, as we covered in the AI labs want to police themselves, and have reported agents doing things nobody intended, such as the 53 ChatGPT users’ images leaked by OpenAI’s agents. An AI agent is software that acts on a person’s behalf: it reads, writes, clicks and connects. On a computer, that means apps and background processes reaching servers a user may never have heard of. Whatever gets agreed, or not, at a future summit, the two leaders are set to meet again at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November and at the G20 in December, so the rulebook for AI, if one comes, is still some way off.
Recommendations
- Check which apps and AI tools on your own Mac already have permission to reach the internet, rather than assuming any government agreement will set that for you.
- Keep macOS and installed apps updated, since AI features are being added to ordinary software faster than most people notice.
- Review new AI apps and agent tools before granting them broad account or file access, the same way you would any other new piece of software.
Relevance to FireAI
FireAI is a firewall for Mac that puts that layer of control in a person’s own hands, without depending on any government’s or company’s promises. It asks before an app, including an AI app or agent, connects to the internet for the first time, and remembers the answer as a rule. (In Home mode, Apple’s own system tools are allowed automatically; in Paranoid mode they must be approved like any other app.) The world map shows where every connection goes, so an AI app’s traffic isn’t invisible. Per-app rules and security modes (Home, Coffee shop, Paranoid, Under attack) set how strict a Mac should be, from asking about new apps to allowing only ones already approved. FireAI’s own AI runs on the Mac, not on a server in any country, and what it analyses never leaves the machine.
Limitations
This account rests on a single Guardian report of the summit. “No major agreement” does not rule out smaller or informal understandings the article does not describe. China’s 90-per-cent penetration figure is the Chinese government’s own stated goal, not an independently measured outcome, and the report does not say how progress toward it will be tracked. The two leaders’ planned meetings in November and December could change the picture described here.
The summits will go on. What connects from a Mac is still a user’s own call. Download FireAI and try it free for 17 days. FireAI is made by HisnLabs.