China ‘can never get ahead’ of US in AI, Bessent says in advance of Xi’s visit

China ‘can never get ahead’ of US in AI, Bessent says in advance of Xi’s visit

Trump’s treasury secretary accuses Chinese artificial intelligence firms of ‘stealing and copying’, weeks before leadership summit in Washington

“The technical word for stealing and copying American AI models is distillation. So, the Chinese distil our models and they can never get ahead of us,” he said on Tuesday during a discussion at the Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business in Dallas.

“It’s kind of like if you’re looking over someone’s shoulder, copying their homework, you can never get a higher grade than they do.”

Model distillation is a widely used AI training technique in which a smaller model learns from the output of larger ones.

The rhetoric from Bessent is in sharp contrast with recent remarks from President Donald Trump, who last week said he was excited about the Chinese leader’s visit.