Reference News Network July 26 report: The U.S. "Fortune" magazine website published an article titled "China bets on robot technology and open-source models, hoping to gain an advantage over the United States in artificial intelligence" on July 23, which reported that China's breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have drawn global attention.

The report said that since the "DeepSeek shockwave" in January this year, China's AI development has continued to accelerate, and although the gap in technological progress with the United States has not been completely eliminated, it has already narrowed.

The report said that unlike the United States, which seems to focus on powerful but proprietary large language models, enterprise-level AI, and semiconductors, China is taking a completely different path to cultivate its AI industry.

Ma Rui, founder of the "China Tech Trend" website, said on July 23 at the "Fortune" AI Brainstorming Conference in Singapore: "Robotics technology is the current focus of China's AI development." Chinese companies are collaborating to integrate AI into physical hardware, known as "embodied intelligence." Even though the United States has stronger foundational models, China has already made more progress in the industrial application of AI.

Paul Triolo, partner at Albright Stonebridge Group, said another difference lies in China's full support for open-source AI. He said: "With few exceptions, Chinese companies have shifted to open-source and weight models."

The report pointed out that the interest of the outside world in China's AI models partly stems from their open-source nature — developers can freely download, use, and experiment with these models on their own devices.

Helen Toner, head of the Strategic and Foundational Research Funding Division at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, said that by publishing source code, AI companies are helping to build "soft power."

Artificial intelligence developers in other countries can use these open-source models to develop their own products, thus expanding China's global influence.

However, in the United States, leading AI companies such as the Open AI Research Center (OpenAI), Anthropic, and Google have not yet released their source code. Even Meta, the metaverse platform company that once led the open-source AI with the Llama model, is reportedly considering a shift toward closed-source development strategy.

Toner explained on July 23: "If you are in the lead, you possess a highly valuable asset." Leading companies are reluctant to give up this asset for free.

She also said that developers such as Moonshot and Alibaba may not be able to participate in the highest level of competition, but their products still have good performance. For them, the open-source model is a good strategy to "accumulate a lot of goodwill."

Toner said that the United States has no consensus on open-source or closed-source, and the competition is still "uncertain." However, she admitted that "China indeed has an advantage" in the competition in the open-source field. (Translated by Qing Songzhu)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7531310410562142754/

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