Global AI Power Struggle: China and U.S. Battle for Technological Dominance
The world's top artificial intelligence (AI) players met for a major meeting at Beijing during January a topic was the center of attention: What are the odds of the possibility of a Chinese AI company surpassing US leading firms within about three-five years?
Chinese AI executives discuss the growing performance gap with U.S. models during a high-level tech conference in Beijing.
The response from an expert AI scientist who was present at the event was quite direct: "Below 20 percent," said Justin Lin, technical lead for Chinese Alibaba's Qwen AI models. "And I believe that 20 percent is very optimistic."
Since little-known startup DeepSeek shocked the world with a powerful AI model it said was built at a fraction of the cost of American equivalents, Chinese companies have topped global downloads for freely-available-to-use models and raised huge Global AI technological struggle.
Lin wasn't alone. Tang Jie, founder of one of the most prominent Chinese AI-focused companies Z.ai which is also referred to as Zhipu, has said that the gap in performance among Chinese as well as US model "may be increasing."
"In certain areas, we could be doing quite well, but we have to recognize China-U.S. AI race challenges and snags we face," he said at the same Beijing meeting.
The limitations on accessing the most powerful chips as well as capital, as well as the country's unique technology ecosystem have led to a different approach from the US in creating AI models accessible to everyone, or as open source.
Chinese AI development progress Beijing and its developers view as a means to speed up advancement and compete with US competitors, has helped Chinese businesses make significant gains. Companies are accelerating the rollout of AI applications that are based on these models, with applications in the real world.
