U.S. & China Begin AI Safety Talks, Vinod Khosla’s Pitch for Tax Reform in the AI Era

Akash Pasricha (0:13)

Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Monday, September 21st. Today on the show, we have some big developments on the US-China AI dialogue. Our tech and politics reporter, Leo Schwartz, spoke with US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant directly about it. We'll have more on that in just a minute. We'll then get to a conversation that I had with Vinod Khosla. I spoke with him about some ideas that he has for tax reform in the AI era. I also asked him for his thoughts on the current AI safety regulation debate that is going on. To close out the show, I'm bringing on the co-founder and CEO of Clay. The company was recently valued a few weeks ago at $7.1 billion. I'm going to talk to him about the AI safety debate going on as well and how it affects enterprise software. It's going to be a great show, so let's get right on into it.

President Trump is set to meet with China President Xi Jinping this week and talks between top government officials already started over the weekend in New York. The Information's tech and politics reporter Leo Schwartz spoke with US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson last night. I want to bring on Leo to share more about that conversation.

Leo, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here.

Leo Schwartz (1:28)

Thanks for having me.

Akash Pasricha (1:29)

You had a busy weekend, busy Sunday. You were talking with US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. What did you ask him and what did he tell you?

Leo Schwartz (1:39)

Yes, so yesterday, Scott Besson, along with US Trade Representative Jameson Greer, spoke with a Chinese delegation led by the Vice Premier on a number of subjects, but AI was top of the agenda.

Of course, the biggest debate in Washington has been about a potential slowdown around AI, given the pace of model development. Could there be some sort of accord with China that would be safety-focused? I asked Besson about this and he actually said that it had been discussed that China and the US have talked about creating what's called the China-US AI Dialogue, which will be essentially a notification mechanism where if there's some sort of incident that rises to the national security level, both countries can tip each other off to it. They also said that they would be meeting again on the subject.

Akash Pasricha (2:27)

Did that surprise you? Has this is something like this been on the table for a while?

Leo Schwartz (2:31)

It's surprising to the degree that pretty much every senior Trump official, including Trump himself, has said, we are not slowing down AI, we cannot halt development, namely because of this race with China.

The fact that there was anything discussed, I think is a bit surprising. At the same time, if you actually take what Besson said at its word, this isn't really a slow down in any sense. It's basically just saying, if there are any sort of incidents, we'll let each other know about them. It's really unclear what would happen after that notification. So is this a slow down? Probably not, but it does seem like a step in the right direction.

Akash Pasricha (3:10)

Right. And of course, that would depend on the implementation of this topic. This is an initial discussion. It would very much vary on whether or not the implementation goes and both parties actually have to pick up the phone and make the call in the first place. What about export controls and trade and chips? Did that come up at all?

Leo Schwartz (3:31)

So this has been one of the central questions and sticking points between the US and China, namely, the export of advanced US chips, NVIDIA chips specifically, as our reporting has showed recently from our terrific reporters in China, there has been a push to emphasize domestic chip production and domestic chips. So I did ask whether export controls of US chips were discussed at all, and Jameson Greer, who's the trade representative, said that it was not on the agenda, which again is a bit surprising, although that doesn't mean it won't be discussed at the main summit happening this week.

Akash Pasricha (4:06)

Yeah, I mean, I imagine just given the size of that industry, maybe that's something that it's like, we can talk about the AI stuff here. Let's leave the chips and the trade for the presidents to talk about down the line maybe.

Leo Schwartz (4:20)

Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I think that will be a major point of contention moving forward.

Akash Pasricha (4:25)

So what about President Trump's social media posts over the weekend? This was another flurry of news. He talked about an AI force of some kind. Can you unpack what it is he said, what we know, what we don't know, what your thoughts are on how this would actually be implemented?