{"id":255544,"date":"2025-12-28T11:37:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T11:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/255544\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T11:37:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T11:37:42","slug":"some-choosing-chinese-amid-tech-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/255544\/","title":{"rendered":"Some choosing Chinese amid tech rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"as boxTitle boxText\" data-desc=\"\u5206\u4eab\u5217\">\n<li>\n<p>By Thomas Urbain and Luna Lin  \/  AFP, NEW YORK<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market.<\/p>\n<p>Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US.<\/p>\n<p>These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names \u2014 ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google\u2019s Gemini \u2014 whose inner workings are fiercely protected.<\/p>\n<p>                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/P09-251228-331.jpg\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, \u201copen\u201d models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (\u963f\u91cc\u5df4\u5df4) to DeepSeek (\u6df1\u5ea6\u6c42\u7d22), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their needs.<\/p>\n<p>Globally, use of Chinese-developed open models has surged from just 1.2 percent late last year to nearly 30 percent in August, according to a report published this month by the developers\u2019 platform OpenRouter and US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s open-source models \u201care cheap \u2014 in some cases free \u2014 and they work well,\u201d said Wang Wen (\u738b\u6587), dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>One American entrepreneur, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that their business saves US$400,000 annually by using Alibaba\u2019s Qwen AI models instead of the proprietary models.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you need cutting-edge capabilities, you go back to OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, but most applications don\u2019t need that,\u201d the entrepreneur said.<\/p>\n<p>US chip titan Nvidia, AI firm Perplexity and California\u2019s Stanford University are also using Qwen models in some of their work.<\/p>\n<p>The January launch of DeepSeek\u2019s high-performance, low-cost and open source R1 large language model defied the perception that the best AI tech had to be from US juggernauts such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.<\/p>\n<p>It was also a reckoning for the US \u2014 locked in a battle for dominance in AI tech with China \u2014 on how far its rival had come.<\/p>\n<p>AI models from Shanghai-based MiniMax (\u4e0a\u6d77\u7a00\u5b87\u79d1\u6280) and Beijing-based Z.ai (\u5317\u4eac\u667a\u8b5c\u83ef\u7ae0\u79d1\u6280) are also popular overseas, and the country has entered the race to build AI agents \u2014 programs that use chatbots to complete online tasks like buying tickets or adding events to a calendar.<\/p>\n<p>Agent friendly \u2014 and open-source \u2014 models, like the latest version of the Kimi K2 model from Beijing-based start-up Moonshot AI (\u5317\u4eac\u6708\u4e4b\u6697\u9762\u79d1\u6280), released last month, are widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution.<\/p>\n<p>The US government is aware of open-source\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n<p>In July, the administration of US President Donald Trump released an AI Action Plan that said the US needed \u201cleading open models founded on American values.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They could become global standards, it said.<\/p>\n<p>However, some US companies are taking the opposite track.<\/p>\n<p>Meta, which had led the country\u2019s open-source efforts with its Llama models, is now concentrating on closed-source AI instead.<\/p>\n<p>However, this summer, OpenAI \u2014 under pressure to revive the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit \u2014 released two \u201copen-weight\u201d models (slightly less malleable than \u201copen-source\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Among major Western companies, only France\u2019s Mistral is sticking with open-source, but it ranks far behind DeepSeek and Qwen in usage rankings.<\/p>\n<p>Western open-source offerings are \u201cjust not as interesting,\u201d said the US entrepreneur who uses Alibaba\u2019s Qwen.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese government has encouraged open-source AI technology, despite questions over its profitability.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Barton, chief technology officer at OMNIUX, said that he was considering using Qwen, but some of his clients could be uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with Chinese-made AI, even for specific tasks.<\/p>\n<p>Given the US administration\u2019s stance on Chinese tech companies, risks remain, Barton said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t want to go all-in with one specific model provider, especially one that\u2019s maybe not aligned with Western ideas,\u201d he said. \u201cIf Alibaba were to get sanctioned or usage was effectively blacklisted, we don\u2019t want to get caught in that trap.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said there were no \u201csalient issues\u201d surrounding data security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCompanies can choose to use the models and build on them &#8230; without any connection to China,\u201d Triolo said.<\/p>\n<p>A recent Stanford study published posited that \u201cthe very nature of open-model releases enables better scrutiny\u201d of the tech.<\/p>\n<p>Gao Fei, chief technology officer at Chinese AI wellness platform BOK Health, agreed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe transparency and sharing nature of open source are themselves the best ways to build trust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Thomas Urbain and Luna Lin \/ AFP, NEW YORK Even as the US is embarked on a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,82,11689,11688],"class_list":{"0":"post-255544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-the-taipei-times","16":"tag-11688"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115796997187020618","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}