U.S. trade restrictions<\/a> have limited access to the most advanced A.I. chips from Nvidia.<\/p>\nIf the Chinese A.I. alternatives are nearly as good and less expensive \u2014 estimates range from 50 percent to 90 percent for some tasks \u2014 they could threaten the business plans and sky-high valuations of the American A.I. leaders. And the Chinese technology is increasingly being embraced by engineers and companies in the United States, seeking to trim costs.<\/p>\n
The China strategy is \u201cto capture market share across the world, even if it doesn\u2019t translate into profits right away,\u201d said Wendy Chang, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think tank.<\/p>\n
Proponents of the open approach point to Linux, an open-source software operating system, as a reason for optimism. The software runs most of the computers in internet data centers and has benefited from many people poring over the code and making fixes.<\/p>\n
Still, computer experts agree that A.I. is a more nuanced case. There is more than code involved, notably the data used for training a model. And A.I. models form judgments and can reason.<\/p>\n
There are also security concerns. Some security experts insist that the open-source approach of releasing both software and the numerical settings for training A.I. models, known as weights, greatly increases the risk of the technology\u2019s being used for cyberattacks or even to help build bioweapons.<\/p>\n
And the heavy influence of the Chinese government on its companies raises potential data protection and security concerns.<\/p>\n
But the closed models of the Silicon Valley companies have had their own security glitches. This week, OpenAI disclosed that a model it was testing went rogue and attacked the computer systems of another company. The targeted company, Hugging Face, said it had deployed a Chinese open-source model from Z.ai to analyze data and counter the attack.<\/p>\n
Now, China has outlined a plan to leverage its open-source advantage as a diplomatic tool.<\/p>\n
The concept of open-source A.I. software as an instrument of soft power has been popularized in technology circles. It suggests influence through persuasion and desire \u2014 something people want \u2014 rather than the coercive \u201chard power\u201d of military might and economic muscle.<\/p>\n
The open path offers a low-cost on-ramp to A.I. for software engineers and for nations seeking to catch the next wave of technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who benefit from free A.I. software certainly recognize it,\u201d said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and a technology policy expert. \u201cFrom a political perspective, it\u2019s an enormous gain for China.\u201d<\/p>\n
China, an authoritarian power, often uses the language of openness in outreach overseas, especially to the developing world. And in recent years, it has used A.I. in those efforts, setting up joint A.I. development and education centers in dozens of nations. This year, China established the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization to shape A.I. governance principles and to promote A.I. adoption and training in China-friendly countries.<\/p>\n
In his speech, Mr. Xi pledged further investments. That included 5,000 A.I. training and seminar programs for students and workers in developing countries over the next five years, as well as new or enlarged A.I. initiatives in Africa, Asia and Latin America.<\/p>\n
On the same day as Mr. Xi\u2019s speech, the People\u2019s Daily, the Communist Party\u2019s official newspaper, published an article on China\u2019s A.I. investments abroad with a litany of training and joint-development programs.<\/p>\n
Its self-congratulatory conclusion: \u201cChina is helping countries around the world, particularly those in the Global South, strengthen their capabilities, winning broad international recognition and support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Xinyun Wu contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan, and Alan Rappeport from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Cold War era, \u201csoft power\u201d meant American movies and music that won hearts and minds abroad.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,387,59707,1555,23962,1552,1671],"class_list":["post-117600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-china","tag-communist-party-of-china","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-politics-and-government","tag-regulation-and-deregulation-of-industry","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}