Expected Xi-Trump Meeting Puts AI and Work in Focus

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are expected to meet in Shenzhen, with artificial intelligence set to remain high on their agenda. The meeting isn’t confirmed. But the decisions under discussion belong to governments, while the changes already reshaping work are reaching people whose livelihoods depend on it.

In China, more than 90 per cent of new microdramas in the first eight months of the year were AI-generated, without cameras or live actors. A production that once required as many as 100 people can now be completed in one week by two to five people. The authors said AI has wiped out much of what was once lucrative work for actors. That is the sharpest measure in the account: fewer people are needed to make the same kind of production, and actors have lost work that once paid well.

Who Measures the Machine

The authors said the next US-China talk on AI should begin with a basic question: do the two governments understand how rapidly AI capabilities are improving? They argue Washington and Beijing need a common way to measure AI’s progress before deciding how to respond. The order matters. Governments are discussing how to assess and manage a technology whose effects are already visible in work, while the account gives no indication that workers have a seat in those talks.

The authors describe continued exchanges on AI as a positive sign, but warn that the technology is advancing so quickly governments may have less time to prepare for its consequences than they assume. Their warning places the speed of technological change against the slower work of government preparation. The meeting is still only expected, and the source does not say what either president will propose or whether the two governments will agree on a shared measure.

The Cost Lands on Workers

Microdramas offer a concrete example of what those consequences look like. The production shift is not described as a distant possibility: more than 90 per cent of new microdramas in China in the first eight months of the year were already made with AI, without cameras or live actors. Where a production could require as many as 100 people, two to five people can now finish one in a week.

The people displaced from that work aren’t abstract figures in a technology forecast. The authors specifically identify actors and say much of their once-lucrative work has been wiped out. The account doesn’t give a total number of jobs lost, name individual workers, or describe any support for those affected. It does show the imbalance plainly: officials are preparing to measure AI’s progress, while workers face the consequences of that progress in their profession.

A Meeting, Not an Answer

The expected meeting in Shenzhen may keep AI high on the agenda, and continued exchanges between Washington and Beijing may help the governments compare their understanding of the technology. But the source offers no details of a policy, agreement, or remedy for actors whose work has disappeared. It also describes no worker-led response or mutual-aid effort. The proposals in view are governmental: a common way to measure AI and a discussion about how to respond.

That leaves the central tension unresolved. The authors say the technology may be moving faster than governments expect, and the example from China shows a rapid shift in who is needed to make microdramas. The two presidents may meet soon; the meeting remains unconfirmed. For actors, the reported loss of lucrative work is already part of the story.