AI labs "need to take responsibility for themselves," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, as debate heats up over whether regulation is needed to slow down the race to build better models. His comments came in an interview that also touched on Xi Jinping's visit to the U.S., the Fed's rate hike and Bessent's relationship with hedge-fund veteran Stanley Druckenmiller.

"The Hugging Face incident, that is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents," Bessent said during an interview with CNBC, referring to the episode in which OpenAI's agents hacked an AI software company. AI developers "can slow down any time they want to," he added.

Safety advocates and some industry leaders have been calling for a slowdown in the race to build better models, but Trump has dismissed calls for tighter guardrails.

Here's what else came up in Bessent's wide-ranging interview on CNBC.

On Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, after the Fed raised interest rates: "I'm not going to talk about whether I agree with it or not. But I have great confidence in Chair Warsh. More importantly, the President has great confidence in him."

On Stanley Druckenmiller: Bessent's former investing mentor last month published an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal criticizing Bessent's intervention in the bond market. Have they talked since? "Oh sure, we talk all the time." Bessent added that he raised the size of the Treasury Department's buyback operation for Treasurys because "we were in a very illiquid period" and "the market was moving quickly."

On Washington's meeting with Beijing: Bessent said U.S. officials discussed economics, tariffs and AI with Chinese counterparts in New York yesterday, ahead of President Xi Jinping's visit to the U.S. this week. Bessent said there's a chance that Xi and Trump will see each other two more times following this visit. The countries have committed to constant communication on AI, he added.

On AI safety in China: "Have they had incidents? Of course, they've had incidents," Bessent said of China. "But because of the nature and the lack of transparency in their system, they're not going to tell us."