U.S. and China must get over mutual distrust on AI development before it’s too late, analysts warn

September 16, 2026 / 12:04 PM EDT / CBS News

As fears grow that the race for AI supremacy could be hurtling us all toward a grim fate not unlike the apocalyptic plot line of the Terminator movies, analysts tell CBS News that mutual distrust between the U.S. and China, as much as the technology itself, could lead humanity "off a cliff."

The long-term fear among experts like the Anthropic researcher whose dire prediction stole headlines a week ago, is that superintelligence — a theoretical AI agent smarter than any person — could start to see humans as rivals for essential resources, endangering our survival.

The bosses of major U.S. AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic have now called for a slowing of AI development, to "pace the frontier."

China, the other major hub of work to push that frontier alongside Silicon Valley, has had its own warnings. A team of U.S. researchers last week used AI to expose a flaw in China's "app for everything" WeChat, which is used by more than 800 million people in the country.

Many Chinese firms agree with the growing consensus that AI must be regulated, according to Leia Wang, non-resident scholar at the Carnegie…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/world/