Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed the building of open-source artificial-intelligence models, touting an approach that has helped the country catch up with the U.S. in global influence.
Xi depicted China as a champion of less-developed nations that fear being left behind as the Trump administration seeks to solidify U.S. dominance in AI. The new body will “answer the call of the Global South,” he said.
Xi said China would do more to help developing countries with AI training and seminars, and would set up AI-focused bodies within the multilateral groupings that China is a member of, including the Brics collection of large emerging economies and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Central Asian nations.
I wish these were actually open models releasing their training data and the papers on their inner workings and not only “open” weights.
I want to get a catalog of all the material China plans to release / offer. Trainings? Count me in. Do I need to know Mandarin? I don’t know… But I have trust that it’s probably worth learning.
If the position is really, “we’re going to make sure the rest of the world can keep up with AI…” that sounds like a program I can get behind.
Good. That means we’re gonna keep getting open models we can run on the cheap in the years to come. For now that’s our only alternative to Big Tech for use cases that actually benefit from LLMs.
The Chinese AI are open weights at best, the aren’t open models as they don’t release training data nor any information about how they work.
Yes, I’m sure Chinese companies are losing countless millions out of their love for FOSS and this absolutely isn’t a strategy to stem the tide of investments into US AI companies.
