No Nobel laureate: "China's AI technology is only months behind the US!"
On February 14, South Korean media "Herald Economic" published an article stating that the Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, believes the gap between the United States and China in artificial intelligence (AI) technology is only a few months.
Hassabis recently spoke to CNBC about China's AI technology capabilities, saying, "I think it is closer to the most advanced models in the US and the West than expected a couple of years ago," and added, "it is now only a few months behind."
He listed DeepSeek and Alibaba as examples of Chinese AI models that are narrowing the gap with the US.
However, he pointed out that although China may catch up with the US in the field of AI, whether it can create new innovations remains to be seen.
Hassabis said, "I believe China has proven that it can catch up with the US, but it has not yet shown the ability to achieve new innovations beyond the cutting-edge technologies like Transformer."
Transformer is a language model launched by Google in 2017 and also the foundational technology for the popular generative AI. The "T" in "ChatGPT" stands for Transformer.
Hassabis said, "Inventing something is a hundred times harder than copying existing things, which is the real challenge for the next generation."
He explained that this is not just a matter of technical capability, but a culture and spirit that encourages innovation and exploration.
He predicted that general artificial intelligence (AGI) may develop in the near future, saying, "When we founded DeepMind in 2010, we thought it would take about 20 years to develop AGI, but now we believe it will take 5 to 10 years to reach that goal."
Regarding the AI bubble theory, he emphasized, "Some industries may be in a bubble, but fundamentally, AI is the most innovative technology ever invented by humans."
Original: toutiao.com/article/1857084895419463/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author."