"At the same time, the idea of open-sourcing is very much alive in China’s AI industry, and that has
Miguel Afonso Caetano
remixtures@tldr-nettime-org.mostr.pub·
AI & ML
2 min read
china
ai
generativeai
usa
competition
opensource
opensourceai
openweights
"At the same time, the idea of open-sourcing is very much alive in China’s AI industry, and that has been a boon for China. Chinese companies regularly release information about the weights and training methods used to create AI models—essentially allowing users to download, modify, and adapt a model for free. (Weights are the numerical values that determine how much an AI should consider certain inputs over others.) When DeepSeek debuted, earlier this year, what was shocking was not just that a Chinese model had come close to American models, but that DeepSeek made its weights public. In the months since, China has seen a flurry of open-source AI models released from large companies—Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu—as well as start-ups—Minimax, Moonshot AI, StepFun, and Z.ai.
Soon, Chinese AI could become the norm for many parts of the world, especially the global South, in turn attracting more developers to China, increasing the competitiveness of Chinese technologies, and allowing China to shape global technological standards. This will be more consequential than the Belt and Road Initiative, through which China has doled out billions of dollars in infrastructure spending around the world. The Chinese government seems to recognize the power of open-source AI.
The AI+ guidelines have a section on open-sourcing that calls for “tools with global reach and influence,” and encourages universities to recognize open-source contributions as degree credits and reward contributions by faculty. We expect China to support the open-source approach in other technology sectors too.
Democratizing access to knowledge has traditionally been a major role of U.S. universities and research labs. Western open-source software has long driven innovation, including in programming languages and web browsers. U.S. tech companies should commit to staying open."
https://www.theatlantic.com/id...684754/
China AI GenerativeAI USA Competition OpenSource OpenSourceAI OpenWeights
Soon, Chinese AI could become the norm for many parts of the world, especially the global South, in turn attracting more developers to China, increasing the competitiveness of Chinese technologies, and allowing China to shape global technological standards. This will be more consequential than the Belt and Road Initiative, through which China has doled out billions of dollars in infrastructure spending around the world. The Chinese government seems to recognize the power of open-source AI.
The AI+ guidelines have a section on open-sourcing that calls for “tools with global reach and influence,” and encourages universities to recognize open-source contributions as degree credits and reward contributions by faculty. We expect China to support the open-source approach in other technology sectors too.
Democratizing access to knowledge has traditionally been a major role of U.S. universities and research labs. Western open-source software has long driven innovation, including in programming languages and web browsers. U.S. tech companies should commit to staying open."
https://www.theatlantic.com/id...684754/
China AI GenerativeAI USA Competition OpenSource OpenSourceAI OpenWeights