Following DeepSeek’s release of its cutting-edge and free large language model early this year, Meta’s chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun corrected, opens new tab those who surmised China is surpassing the United States in the technology. A correct reading, he said, is “open source models are surpassing proprietary ones”. What’s less clear, though, is how long China will flood the world with its free innovations. Tech bosses in the People’s Republic including Alibaba’s Eddie Wu, Tencent’s Pony Ma and Robin Li of Baidu have embraced open source, a system in which anyone can freely use, study, modify and share artificial intelligence software and code. China appears to endorse the approach: in a meeting in January with Premier Li Qiang, DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng was designated representative of the AI sector. Open source is not solely a Chinese novelty but the country’s AI offerings are more in line with the standard definition. DeepSeek’s source code is under a license that allows near-unrestricted use.

Full opinion : How closeted China’s love for open source particularly in AI may be its undoing.