Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, urged American artificial intelligence (AI) leaders to face the growing competition posed by China’s advances in the sector. Schmidt said the US had a headway, but could lose its edge as Beijing stresses on practical applications and open-source development.
"They (China) are not pursuing crazy AGI (artificial general intelligence) strategies partly because the hardware limitations that the US has put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist. They can't raise $100 million or its equivalent to build the data centers. So, as a result, they focus on taking AI and applying it to everything," Schmidt said, speaking on the All In Podcast.
He acknowledged US restrictions on semiconductor exports but stressed that Beijing’s growing dominance in applied AI is a threat to the US ecosystem.
One key difference he noted was that US tech giants favour proprietary systems built on closed-source and close weights models. However, China is embracing open weights and open training data, making its models more accessible globally, Schmidt said, warning that countries worldwide are increasingly adopting Chinese models due to this.
Open source AI models are AI systems made freely available to use, study, modify, and share by anyone, without needing permission. Meanwhile, open weights refers to the release of a model’s trained parameters or datasets the AI learned during training, and made publicly accessible for anyone.
In response to a question about American tech companies maintaining leadership, Schmidt said efforts to release smaller, open-weight models that can run on consumer devices by OpenAI are a good push from the West. However, he said US firms and policymakers must not forget practical AI applications in the midst of chasing large AGI projects. "We better also be competing with the Chinese in day-to-day stuff: consumer apps, robots, and so forth”.
Schmidt also pointed to America’s unique strengths, describing the US as “chaotic, confusing, loud but clever".
"They (China) are not pursuing crazy AGI (artificial general intelligence) strategies partly because the hardware limitations that the US has put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist. They can't raise $100 million or its equivalent to build the data centers. So, as a result, they focus on taking AI and applying it to everything," Schmidt said, speaking on the All In Podcast.
He acknowledged US restrictions on semiconductor exports but stressed that Beijing’s growing dominance in applied AI is a threat to the US ecosystem.
One key difference he noted was that US tech giants favour proprietary systems built on closed-source and close weights models. However, China is embracing open weights and open training data, making its models more accessible globally, Schmidt said, warning that countries worldwide are increasingly adopting Chinese models due to this.
Open source AI models are AI systems made freely available to use, study, modify, and share by anyone, without needing permission. Meanwhile, open weights refers to the release of a model’s trained parameters or datasets the AI learned during training, and made publicly accessible for anyone.
In response to a question about American tech companies maintaining leadership, Schmidt said efforts to release smaller, open-weight models that can run on consumer devices by OpenAI are a good push from the West. However, he said US firms and policymakers must not forget practical AI applications in the midst of chasing large AGI projects. "We better also be competing with the Chinese in day-to-day stuff: consumer apps, robots, and so forth”.
Schmidt also pointed to America’s unique strengths, describing the US as “chaotic, confusing, loud but clever".
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