US Treasury's Bessent plans to discuss AI and rare earths with China's He, source says

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (Reuters) - US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to discuss AI, trade, rare earths and economic issues when he meets with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York City this weekend, according to a source familiar with his plans.

The discussions are significant because the US and China are the two major forces driving development of advanced AI tools and the global adoption of the technology. Rare earths play a crucial role in the manufacturing of technology.

Bessent and He will meet ahead of a summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 24 in Washington.

The Associated Press first reported the US plans.

Bessent said in a statement that he expects the discussions to cover "both open- and closed-weight models." Open-weight models are AI systems with publicly accessible core elements. Users can download and fine-tune them for specific tasks.

Chinese open-weight models are becoming more popular with US companies because they can be cheaper than so-called closed-weight AI tools, such as those developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other US companies.

Chinese AI models have even been used by the US government. Reuters reported on Thursday that a US government website employed an AI model from a Chinese company to allow users to search proposed federal regulations even though the FBI accused the model's developer, Alibaba 9988.HK, of "malicious" copying of Anthropic's technology.