China’s leader on Friday laid out his nation’s bid to shape the path of artificial intelligence, casting China as a champion of an open approach to the technology and a trusted ally of developing nations in advancing A.I.
The remarks by Xi Jinping highlighted the importance that China’s top political and governmental leadership place on artificial intelligence. Mr. Xi’s speech did not mention the United States by name, but the message was clear: China plans to compete as the world’s other A.I. superpower.
Speaking at an A.I. conference in Shanghai, Mr. Xi said that “A.I. development should not be a solo performance by a single country but a symphony of global collaboration.”
He described open-source A.I. technology, in which much of the software can be freely shared and modified, as a “rare and historical opportunity” to spread the benefits of A.I. globally. The technology, he said, must be shared by developing nations or raise the threat of “new historical injustices.”
Mr. Xi’s vision is assuredly one of national self-interest as well. China is generally regarded as trailing the United States in A.I., but it is catching up. That is particularly evident in the open-source software developed by China’s leading A.I. software companies like DeepSeek, Moonshot and Zhipu.
Their A.I. systems are closing the gap with the leading American A.I. chatbots and question-answering programs, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini.
