China’s AI ecosystem is not as open as it claims. Nor is any other country’s | Letters
Responding to an article by China’s ambassador to the UK, Prof Paul H Cleverley advocates shared openness standards, while Dr Claire Jenkins says British AI can offer a distinctive path Ambassador Zheng Zeguang rightly celebrates openly released AI models, and the Chinese labs behind Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi have led the way – competition that benefits everyone, especially where models can run on…
China's ambassador to the UK, Prof Paul H Cleverley, has praised the country's open AI ecosystem, highlighting the success of models like Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi. These models have reportedly led the way in AI development, offering benefits to the world, particularly in regions with limited resources. The ambassador's comments were made in response to an article by Prof Paul H Cleverley, who advocates for shared openness standards in AI development.
However, Dr Claire Jenkins questions the claims of openness in China's AI sector, citing GeoGPT as an example. GeoGPT is a geoscience system developed by Zhejiang Lab and presented at the recent World AI Conference. Despite being marketed as a model of open science, GeoGPT fails to meet the criteria for open AI systems according to the model openness framework endorsed by the UN.
This is due to several reasons: GeoGPT only releases model weights, which are primarily based on Alibaba's Qwen model with non-compliant licenses; it does not release training data or application source code; and its governance committee is answerable to Zhejiang Lab alone. This raises concerns about the true nature of openness in China's AI development efforts.
Written by urgent.news from Guardian Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
