New Delhi, Sept. 21 -- President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will likely have little choice but to discuss artificial intelligence and its dizzying advancement when they meet this week. Their countries, after all, are engaged in a race to be the world's pre-eminent AI power.

Seemingly everyone is talking about artificial intelligence: Industry leaders are calling for slowing the pace of development; researchers are warning about catastrophic risks; and concerns about AI going rogue are mounting. But few expect Trump and Xi to get very far on the contentious topic when they meet Thursday in Washington, D.C.

In fact, the bar for their second summit is relatively low. Analysts expect they will focus most on reinforcing the f...