China’s Attempt to Dominate Global AI Scene
China’s efforts to dominate the world of artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining traction, with industry insiders and technology analysts stating that Chinese AI models are already hugely popular and keeping pace with – and even surpassing – those from the US in terms of performance. The AI has become a new battleground in the ongoing tech war between the US and China, with the US restricting China’s access to leading-edge chips designed to power AI amid concerns that the technology could threaten US national security.
Chinese companies are developing their own large language models (LLMs), which are trained on vast amounts of data and underpin applications such as chatbots. Unlike OpenAI’s models, many Chinese companies are developing open-source LLMs, which developers can download and build on top of for free and without stringent licensing requirements. Qwen, a family of AI models created by Alibaba, is the most popular on Hugging Face, a repository of LLMs.
Chinese companies are also pushing the open-source model, which enables them to build a community around their products and drive innovation. This approach allows Chinese companies to make their models globally accessible, giving them an advantage in the AI market. “Chinese companies would like to see their models used outside of China, so this is definitely a way for companies to become global players in the AI space,” said Paul Triolo, a partner at global advisory firm DGA Group.
Despite the restrictions on exporting advanced semiconductor and chipmaking equipment to China, Chinese companies have still managed to launch advanced AI models. They have stockpiled large numbers of Nvidia GPUs and are leveraging domestic GPUs from Huawei and other firms to power their AI models. Huawei has been one of the leading players in pursuing the goal of creating viable alternatives to Nvidia in China, while firms like Baidu and Alibaba have also been investing in semiconductor design.
As the AI technology advances, the debate is now shifting to what applications will be built on top of these models and who will dominate the global internet landscape. “If you assume these frontier base AI models are table stakes, it’s about what these models are used for, like accelerating frontier science and engineering technology,” said Grace Isford, a partner at Lux Capital. Today’s AI models have been compared to operating systems, with the potential to dominate a market like Microsoft’s Windows, Google’s Android, and Apple’s iOS. The stakes for building a dominant LLM are high, and China’s approach to open-sourcing its AI models could give it an edge in the global AI market.