Close Menu
    Cheap-to-run Open Source Chinese AI is equalling and bettering the AI investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into, which may have profound future implications.
    Futurology

    Cheap-to-run Open Source Chinese AI is equalling and bettering the AI investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into, which may have profound future implications.


    Throughout 2024 Open Source AI has been slowly catching up with investor-funded AI, but in the first weeks of 2025 that has dramatically accelerated. Now Open Source isn't just catching up, it is arguably better and superior to investor-funded AI.

    Restrictions on chip imports seem to be driving Chinese innovation, not slowing them down. Using lesser chips, they've optimized AI to run cheaper and more efficiently, but be just as powerful. Not only that, they've open-sourced that AI.

    Where does that leave the hundreds of billions poured into investor-funded AI? Who knows. But they've no product to sell that people can't get elsewhere way cheaper or for free.

    This also means AI will become decentralized and democratized. Many thought it would just be in the hands of Big Tech, but the exact opposite scenario is playing out.

    What are the economic implications? AI hype is keeping the US stock market afloat – how long can that last?

    Source

    Cheap-to-run Open Source Chinese AI is equalling and bettering the AI investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into, which may have profound future implications.
    byu/lughnasadh inFuturology

    Share.
    View 4 Comments

    4 Comments

    1. xondk on

      I mean that’s the general thing with new tools, you place them in the hands of people, and one group might do one thing, another might do another thing, and so on. Collectively the efficient way to use the tool emerges, until it generally plateaus.

      It doesn’t surprise me that China which has been limited to get the brute force, works on ways to make it more efficient.

      I wouldn’t be surprise if a lot of AI companies get tunnel vision in terms of how things are done.

      And over time at least because of how much power AI needs, I would think the most efficient AI would win.

    4. therealjerrystaute on

      In Frederik Pohl’s sci fi Starburst, there’s an experiment done with children who are tasked with getting across a room without directly touching the floor. Remarkably, the more the researchers cut back on the supplies they gave the kids to accomplish it, the faster the kids made it across, due to their creativity. Earth authorities then used this idea to mount a unique space mission meant to figure out how to solve Earth’s resource problems…