美国或正误入AI竞赛歧途
正文翻译
题图。
Surrounded by kick-boxing, piano-playing humanoid robots at a high-tech fair in Shenzhen last month, some tech influencers were asking: can the west catch up with China?
上个月在深圳一场高科技展会上，当被拳击、弹钢琴的人形机器人环绕时，一些科技界意见领袖不禁发问：西方能否赶上中国？
That question would have sounded absurd two decades ago, but it is anything but today. This week, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published its latest critical technology tracker, covering high-impact global research in 74 areas. It found that China now leads in 66 of those technologies, in fields as varied as computer vision, quantum sensors and nuclear energy, with the US ahead in the other eight.
这个问题若在二十年前提出会显得荒谬，但如今情况已截然不同。本周，澳大利亚战略政策研究所发布了最新的关键技术追踪报告，涵盖74个领域的全球高影响力研究。报告发现，中国目前在计算机视觉、量子传感器和核能等不同领域的66项技术中处于领先地位，美国则在其余8项技术中保持优势。
ASPI’s researchers highlighted a familiar story across many technologies. An early and overwhelming US lead in research output in the first decade of this century has been surpassed by China’s persistent long-term investment in fundamental research. In 2005, China accounted for just 6 per cent of the world’s most highly cited research papers but that share had risen to 48 per cent this year. The comparable proportion of US publications fell from 43 per cent to 9 per cent. At a time when the US is defunding many federal science programmes, China is doing the opposite by “building the whole technology ecosystem”, says Jenny Wong-Leung, one of the report’s authors.
该研究所的研究人员强调了一个在许多技术领域都相似的趋势：本世纪头十年美国在研究产出上的早期压倒性领先优势，已被中国对基础研究的长期持续投资所超越。2005年，中国仅占全球最高被引研究论文的6%，但今年这一比例已升至48%。而美国论文的相应比例则从43%下降至9%。报告作者之一黄梁詹妮指出，在美国削减许多联邦科学项目资金之际，中国正反其道而行，通过“构建完整的技术生态系统”持续投入。
ASPI’s findings accord with Nature’s latest ranking of research institutions, tracking articles across 145 science journals. In terms of research output, nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are Chinese with only Harvard University in the top tier. China is now mass manufacturing research; it truly has become a scientific superpower.
澳大利亚战略政策研究所的研究结果与《自然》杂志最新研究机构排名相符，该排名追踪了145种科学期刊的文章。就研究产出而言，全球前10名研究机构中有9家来自中国，仅哈佛大学位列第一梯队。中国正在实现科研的规模化生产；它确实已成为一个科学超级大国。
Published research, though, does not automatically translate into technological capability. Moreover, the location of research expertise does not always map with successful commercialisation of technology — as a long line of frustrated British scientists can attest.
然而，已发表的研究成果并不会自动转化为技术能力。此外，研究专长的所在地并不总是与技术成功商业化相匹配——这一点许多受挫的英国科学家可以作证。
However, a separate report from the Special Competitive Studies Project in the US earlier this year also highlighted the striking progress that China has made in adopting many frontier technologies. According to the SCSP’s staff assessment, the US is still leading in semiconductors, synthetic biology and quantum computing while China dominates in advanced batteries, 5G and commercial drones. But the most contested, and arguably most consequential, area is artificial intelligence.
不过，美国特别竞争研究项目今年早些时候发布的一份独立报告也强调了中国在采用许多前沿技术方面取得的显著进展。根据该机构工作人员的评估，美国仍在半导体、合成生物学和量子计算领域保持领先，而中国则在先进电池、5G和商用无人机领域占据主导地位。但竞争最激烈、且可以说最具决定性意义的领域是人工智能。
President Donald Trump has said that the US will do “whatever it takes” to lead the world in AI. And the big US tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, are making colossal investments to fulfil that ambition. OpenAI alone is planning to invest $400bn over the next few years to build out its Stargate data centres across the US. Last month, the Trump administration launched the Genesis Mission to boost the private AI sector by sharing the public data sets and computing resources of the country’s 17 national laboratories. “We’re essentially pitting our private capitalists against this nation state of China. The stakeholders here have two very different sets of resources, attributes, strengths and weaknesses,” says David Lin, a senior adviser to the SCSP.
美国总统特朗普曾表示，美国将“不惜一切代价”在人工智能领域引领世界。包括OpenAI、Alphabet、微软、Meta和亚马逊在内的美国科技巨头正为实现这一雄心投入巨额资金。仅OpenAI就计划未来数年投资4000亿美元，在全美建设其“星际之门”数据中心。上月，特朗普政府启动“创世纪计划”，通过共享美国17个国家实验室的公共数据集和计算资源来推动私营人工智能领域发展。“我们实质上是在让本国私人资本与中国这个国家主体进行较量。相关利益方拥有截然不同的资源禀赋、属性特征及优势短板，”美国特别竞争研究项目高级顾问林戴维表示。
But the US and China are also adopting very different approaches to adopting AI. The big US companies mostly favour massive, proprietary, “closed-weights” models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which may be best suited to achieving generalisable intelligence. By contrast, Chinese AI companies favour smaller, cheaper (and arguably less safe) “open-weights” models, such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, that can be more readily adapted by developers. In part, China is making a virtue of necessity because US export restrictions have denied it access to the state-of-the-art silicon chips needed to build the most powerful foundation models. But it also reflects China’s priority in rapidly diffusing the technology.
但美中两国在人工智能应用路径上存在显著差异。美国科技巨头大多青睐ChatGPT和Gemini这类庞大、专有、“闭源权重”的模型，这类架构可能最适于实现通用智能。相比之下，中国人工智能企业更倾向于采用DeepSeek和阿里通义千问等更轻量化、成本更低（且安全性存疑）的“开源权重”模型，这类模型更便于开发者进行适配改造。这种差异部分源于中国的现实条件——美国出口管制使其无法获得构建最强大基础模型所需的尖端芯片，但同时也反映出中国优先考虑技术快速普及的战略取向。
Michael Power, the former global strategist of the investment firm Ninety One, reckons the US is making a “catastrophic strategic error” in betting so heavily on giant closed AI models. “China’s model is turning out to be far more effective in terms of usable compute in the real world,” Power tells me, especially considering the country’s lower energy costs. Even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has expressed his personal concern that “we have been on the wrong side of history here”.
投资管理公司NinetyOne的前全球策略师迈克尔-鲍尔认为，美国在封闭式大型人工智能模型上投入如此巨大，是在犯“灾难性的战略错误”。鲍尔告诉我，尤其是在考虑到中国较低的能源成本的情况下，“中国的模式在现实世界中的可用计算能力方面，结果证明要有效得多”。就连OpenAI的首席执行官萨姆-奥特曼也表达了他个人的担忧，即“我们站在了历史错误的一边”。
A recent study by MIT and Hugging Face found that Chinese open models have now overtaken comparable US models in terms of global adoption. Many US companies, including Airbnb, have become fans of the “fast and cheap” Qwen. In this critical area too the question arises: can the west catch up with China?
麻省理工学院与美国机器学习公司Hugging Face的近期研究发现，中国开源模型在全球采用率方面现已超越同类美国模型。包括爱彼迎在内的许多美国企业已成为“快速且廉价”的通义千问模型的拥趸。在这一关键领域同样浮现出这样的疑问：西方能否追上中国的步伐？
题图。
Surrounded by kick-boxing, piano-playing humanoid robots at a high-tech fair in Shenzhen last month, some tech influencers were asking: can the west catch up with China?
上个月在深圳一场高科技展会上，当被拳击、弹钢琴的人形机器人环绕时，一些科技界意见领袖不禁发问：西方能否赶上中国？
That question would have sounded absurd two decades ago, but it is anything but today. This week, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published its latest critical technology tracker, covering high-impact global research in 74 areas. It found that China now leads in 66 of those technologies, in fields as varied as computer vision, quantum sensors and nuclear energy, with the US ahead in the other eight.
这个问题若在二十年前提出会显得荒谬，但如今情况已截然不同。本周，澳大利亚战略政策研究所发布了最新的关键技术追踪报告，涵盖74个领域的全球高影响力研究。报告发现，中国目前在计算机视觉、量子传感器和核能等不同领域的66项技术中处于领先地位，美国则在其余8项技术中保持优势。
ASPI’s researchers highlighted a familiar story across many technologies. An early and overwhelming US lead in research output in the first decade of this century has been surpassed by China’s persistent long-term investment in fundamental research. In 2005, China accounted for just 6 per cent of the world’s most highly cited research papers but that share had risen to 48 per cent this year. The comparable proportion of US publications fell from 43 per cent to 9 per cent. At a time when the US is defunding many federal science programmes, China is doing the opposite by “building the whole technology ecosystem”, says Jenny Wong-Leung, one of the report’s authors.
该研究所的研究人员强调了一个在许多技术领域都相似的趋势：本世纪头十年美国在研究产出上的早期压倒性领先优势，已被中国对基础研究的长期持续投资所超越。2005年，中国仅占全球最高被引研究论文的6%，但今年这一比例已升至48%。而美国论文的相应比例则从43%下降至9%。报告作者之一黄梁詹妮指出，在美国削减许多联邦科学项目资金之际，中国正反其道而行，通过“构建完整的技术生态系统”持续投入。
ASPI’s findings accord with Nature’s latest ranking of research institutions, tracking articles across 145 science journals. In terms of research output, nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are Chinese with only Harvard University in the top tier. China is now mass manufacturing research; it truly has become a scientific superpower.
澳大利亚战略政策研究所的研究结果与《自然》杂志最新研究机构排名相符，该排名追踪了145种科学期刊的文章。就研究产出而言，全球前10名研究机构中有9家来自中国，仅哈佛大学位列第一梯队。中国正在实现科研的规模化生产；它确实已成为一个科学超级大国。
Published research, though, does not automatically translate into technological capability. Moreover, the location of research expertise does not always map with successful commercialisation of technology — as a long line of frustrated British scientists can attest.
然而，已发表的研究成果并不会自动转化为技术能力。此外，研究专长的所在地并不总是与技术成功商业化相匹配——这一点许多受挫的英国科学家可以作证。
However, a separate report from the Special Competitive Studies Project in the US earlier this year also highlighted the striking progress that China has made in adopting many frontier technologies. According to the SCSP’s staff assessment, the US is still leading in semiconductors, synthetic biology and quantum computing while China dominates in advanced batteries, 5G and commercial drones. But the most contested, and arguably most consequential, area is artificial intelligence.
不过，美国特别竞争研究项目今年早些时候发布的一份独立报告也强调了中国在采用许多前沿技术方面取得的显著进展。根据该机构工作人员的评估，美国仍在半导体、合成生物学和量子计算领域保持领先，而中国则在先进电池、5G和商用无人机领域占据主导地位。但竞争最激烈、且可以说最具决定性意义的领域是人工智能。
President Donald Trump has said that the US will do “whatever it takes” to lead the world in AI. And the big US tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, are making colossal investments to fulfil that ambition. OpenAI alone is planning to invest $400bn over the next few years to build out its Stargate data centres across the US. Last month, the Trump administration launched the Genesis Mission to boost the private AI sector by sharing the public data sets and computing resources of the country’s 17 national laboratories. “We’re essentially pitting our private capitalists against this nation state of China. The stakeholders here have two very different sets of resources, attributes, strengths and weaknesses,” says David Lin, a senior adviser to the SCSP.
美国总统特朗普曾表示，美国将“不惜一切代价”在人工智能领域引领世界。包括OpenAI、Alphabet、微软、Meta和亚马逊在内的美国科技巨头正为实现这一雄心投入巨额资金。仅OpenAI就计划未来数年投资4000亿美元，在全美建设其“星际之门”数据中心。上月，特朗普政府启动“创世纪计划”，通过共享美国17个国家实验室的公共数据集和计算资源来推动私营人工智能领域发展。“我们实质上是在让本国私人资本与中国这个国家主体进行较量。相关利益方拥有截然不同的资源禀赋、属性特征及优势短板，”美国特别竞争研究项目高级顾问林戴维表示。
But the US and China are also adopting very different approaches to adopting AI. The big US companies mostly favour massive, proprietary, “closed-weights” models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which may be best suited to achieving generalisable intelligence. By contrast, Chinese AI companies favour smaller, cheaper (and arguably less safe) “open-weights” models, such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, that can be more readily adapted by developers. In part, China is making a virtue of necessity because US export restrictions have denied it access to the state-of-the-art silicon chips needed to build the most powerful foundation models. But it also reflects China’s priority in rapidly diffusing the technology.
但美中两国在人工智能应用路径上存在显著差异。美国科技巨头大多青睐ChatGPT和Gemini这类庞大、专有、“闭源权重”的模型，这类架构可能最适于实现通用智能。相比之下，中国人工智能企业更倾向于采用DeepSeek和阿里通义千问等更轻量化、成本更低（且安全性存疑）的“开源权重”模型，这类模型更便于开发者进行适配改造。这种差异部分源于中国的现实条件——美国出口管制使其无法获得构建最强大基础模型所需的尖端芯片，但同时也反映出中国优先考虑技术快速普及的战略取向。
Michael Power, the former global strategist of the investment firm Ninety One, reckons the US is making a “catastrophic strategic error” in betting so heavily on giant closed AI models. “China’s model is turning out to be far more effective in terms of usable compute in the real world,” Power tells me, especially considering the country’s lower energy costs. Even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has expressed his personal concern that “we have been on the wrong side of history here”.
投资管理公司NinetyOne的前全球策略师迈克尔-鲍尔认为，美国在封闭式大型人工智能模型上投入如此巨大，是在犯“灾难性的战略错误”。鲍尔告诉我，尤其是在考虑到中国较低的能源成本的情况下，“中国的模式在现实世界中的可用计算能力方面，结果证明要有效得多”。就连OpenAI的首席执行官萨姆-奥特曼也表达了他个人的担忧，即“我们站在了历史错误的一边”。
A recent study by MIT and Hugging Face found that Chinese open models have now overtaken comparable US models in terms of global adoption. Many US companies, including Airbnb, have become fans of the “fast and cheap” Qwen. In this critical area too the question arises: can the west catch up with China?
麻省理工学院与美国机器学习公司Hugging Face的近期研究发现，中国开源模型在全球采用率方面现已超越同类美国模型。包括爱彼迎在内的许多美国企业已成为“快速且廉价”的通义千问模型的拥趸。在这一关键领域同样浮现出这样的疑问：西方能否追上中国的步伐？
评论翻译
题图。
Surrounded by kick-boxing, piano-playing humanoid robots at a high-tech fair in Shenzhen last month, some tech influencers were asking: can the west catch up with China?
上个月在深圳一场高科技展会上，当被拳击、弹钢琴的人形机器人环绕时，一些科技界意见领袖不禁发问：西方能否赶上中国？
That question would have sounded absurd two decades ago, but it is anything but today. This week, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published its latest critical technology tracker, covering high-impact global research in 74 areas. It found that China now leads in 66 of those technologies, in fields as varied as computer vision, quantum sensors and nuclear energy, with the US ahead in the other eight.
这个问题若在二十年前提出会显得荒谬，但如今情况已截然不同。本周，澳大利亚战略政策研究所发布了最新的关键技术追踪报告，涵盖74个领域的全球高影响力研究。报告发现，中国目前在计算机视觉、量子传感器和核能等不同领域的66项技术中处于领先地位，美国则在其余8项技术中保持优势。
ASPI’s researchers highlighted a familiar story across many technologies. An early and overwhelming US lead in research output in the first decade of this century has been surpassed by China’s persistent long-term investment in fundamental research. In 2005, China accounted for just 6 per cent of the world’s most highly cited research papers but that share had risen to 48 per cent this year. The comparable proportion of US publications fell from 43 per cent to 9 per cent. At a time when the US is defunding many federal science programmes, China is doing the opposite by “building the whole technology ecosystem”, says Jenny Wong-Leung, one of the report’s authors.
该研究所的研究人员强调了一个在许多技术领域都相似的趋势：本世纪头十年美国在研究产出上的早期压倒性领先优势，已被中国对基础研究的长期持续投资所超越。2005年，中国仅占全球最高被引研究论文的6%，但今年这一比例已升至48%。而美国论文的相应比例则从43%下降至9%。报告作者之一黄梁詹妮指出，在美国削减许多联邦科学项目资金之际，中国正反其道而行，通过“构建完整的技术生态系统”持续投入。
ASPI’s findings accord with Nature’s latest ranking of research institutions, tracking articles across 145 science journals. In terms of research output, nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are Chinese with only Harvard University in the top tier. China is now mass manufacturing research; it truly has become a scientific superpower.
澳大利亚战略政策研究所的研究结果与《自然》杂志最新研究机构排名相符，该排名追踪了145种科学期刊的文章。就研究产出而言，全球前10名研究机构中有9家来自中国，仅哈佛大学位列第一梯队。中国正在实现科研的规模化生产；它确实已成为一个科学超级大国。
Published research, though, does not automatically translate into technological capability. Moreover, the location of research expertise does not always map with successful commercialisation of technology — as a long line of frustrated British scientists can attest.
然而，已发表的研究成果并不会自动转化为技术能力。此外，研究专长的所在地并不总是与技术成功商业化相匹配——这一点许多受挫的英国科学家可以作证。
However, a separate report from the Special Competitive Studies Project in the US earlier this year also highlighted the striking progress that China has made in adopting many frontier technologies. According to the SCSP’s staff assessment, the US is still leading in semiconductors, synthetic biology and quantum computing while China dominates in advanced batteries, 5G and commercial drones. But the most contested, and arguably most consequential, area is artificial intelligence.
不过，美国特别竞争研究项目今年早些时候发布的一份独立报告也强调了中国在采用许多前沿技术方面取得的显著进展。根据该机构工作人员的评估，美国仍在半导体、合成生物学和量子计算领域保持领先，而中国则在先进电池、5G和商用无人机领域占据主导地位。但竞争最激烈、且可以说最具决定性意义的领域是人工智能。
President Donald Trump has said that the US will do “whatever it takes” to lead the world in AI. And the big US tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, are making colossal investments to fulfil that ambition. OpenAI alone is planning to invest $400bn over the next few years to build out its Stargate data centres across the US. Last month, the Trump administration launched the Genesis Mission to boost the private AI sector by sharing the public data sets and computing resources of the country’s 17 national laboratories. “We’re essentially pitting our private capitalists against this nation state of China. The stakeholders here have two very different sets of resources, attributes, strengths and weaknesses,” says David Lin, a senior adviser to the SCSP.
美国总统特朗普曾表示，美国将“不惜一切代价”在人工智能领域引领世界。包括OpenAI、Alphabet、微软、Meta和亚马逊在内的美国科技巨头正为实现这一雄心投入巨额资金。仅OpenAI就计划未来数年投资4000亿美元，在全美建设其“星际之门”数据中心。上月，特朗普政府启动“创世纪计划”，通过共享美国17个国家实验室的公共数据集和计算资源来推动私营人工智能领域发展。“我们实质上是在让本国私人资本与中国这个国家主体进行较量。相关利益方拥有截然不同的资源禀赋、属性特征及优势短板，”美国特别竞争研究项目高级顾问林戴维表示。
But the US and China are also adopting very different approaches to adopting AI. The big US companies mostly favour massive, proprietary, “closed-weights” models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which may be best suited to achieving generalisable intelligence. By contrast, Chinese AI companies favour smaller, cheaper (and arguably less safe) “open-weights” models, such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, that can be more readily adapted by developers. In part, China is making a virtue of necessity because US export restrictions have denied it access to the state-of-the-art silicon chips needed to build the most powerful foundation models. But it also reflects China’s priority in rapidly diffusing the technology.
但美中两国在人工智能应用路径上存在显著差异。美国科技巨头大多青睐ChatGPT和Gemini这类庞大、专有、“闭源权重”的模型，这类架构可能最适于实现通用智能。相比之下，中国人工智能企业更倾向于采用DeepSeek和阿里通义千问等更轻量化、成本更低（且安全性存疑）的“开源权重”模型，这类模型更便于开发者进行适配改造。这种差异部分源于中国的现实条件——美国出口管制使其无法获得构建最强大基础模型所需的尖端芯片，但同时也反映出中国优先考虑技术快速普及的战略取向。
Michael Power, the former global strategist of the investment firm Ninety One, reckons the US is making a “catastrophic strategic error” in betting so heavily on giant closed AI models. “China’s model is turning out to be far more effective in terms of usable compute in the real world,” Power tells me, especially considering the country’s lower energy costs. Even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has expressed his personal concern that “we have been on the wrong side of history here”.
投资管理公司NinetyOne的前全球策略师迈克尔-鲍尔认为，美国在封闭式大型人工智能模型上投入如此巨大，是在犯“灾难性的战略错误”。鲍尔告诉我，尤其是在考虑到中国较低的能源成本的情况下，“中国的模式在现实世界中的可用计算能力方面，结果证明要有效得多”。就连OpenAI的首席执行官萨姆-奥特曼也表达了他个人的担忧，即“我们站在了历史错误的一边”。
A recent study by MIT and Hugging Face found that Chinese open models have now overtaken comparable US models in terms of global adoption. Many US companies, including Airbnb, have become fans of the “fast and cheap” Qwen. In this critical area too the question arises: can the west catch up with China?
麻省理工学院与美国机器学习公司Hugging Face的近期研究发现，中国开源模型在全球采用率方面现已超越同类美国模型。包括爱彼迎在内的许多美国企业已成为“快速且廉价”的通义千问模型的拥趸。在这一关键领域同样浮现出这样的疑问：西方能否追上中国的步伐？
题图。
Surrounded by kick-boxing, piano-playing humanoid robots at a high-tech fair in Shenzhen last month, some tech influencers were asking: can the west catch up with China?
上个月在深圳一场高科技展会上，当被拳击、弹钢琴的人形机器人环绕时，一些科技界意见领袖不禁发问：西方能否赶上中国？
That question would have sounded absurd two decades ago, but it is anything but today. This week, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published its latest critical technology tracker, covering high-impact global research in 74 areas. It found that China now leads in 66 of those technologies, in fields as varied as computer vision, quantum sensors and nuclear energy, with the US ahead in the other eight.
这个问题若在二十年前提出会显得荒谬，但如今情况已截然不同。本周，澳大利亚战略政策研究所发布了最新的关键技术追踪报告，涵盖74个领域的全球高影响力研究。报告发现，中国目前在计算机视觉、量子传感器和核能等不同领域的66项技术中处于领先地位，美国则在其余8项技术中保持优势。
ASPI’s researchers highlighted a familiar story across many technologies. An early and overwhelming US lead in research output in the first decade of this century has been surpassed by China’s persistent long-term investment in fundamental research. In 2005, China accounted for just 6 per cent of the world’s most highly cited research papers but that share had risen to 48 per cent this year. The comparable proportion of US publications fell from 43 per cent to 9 per cent. At a time when the US is defunding many federal science programmes, China is doing the opposite by “building the whole technology ecosystem”, says Jenny Wong-Leung, one of the report’s authors.
该研究所的研究人员强调了一个在许多技术领域都相似的趋势：本世纪头十年美国在研究产出上的早期压倒性领先优势，已被中国对基础研究的长期持续投资所超越。2005年，中国仅占全球最高被引研究论文的6%，但今年这一比例已升至48%。而美国论文的相应比例则从43%下降至9%。报告作者之一黄梁詹妮指出，在美国削减许多联邦科学项目资金之际，中国正反其道而行，通过“构建完整的技术生态系统”持续投入。
ASPI’s findings accord with Nature’s latest ranking of research institutions, tracking articles across 145 science journals. In terms of research output, nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are Chinese with only Harvard University in the top tier. China is now mass manufacturing research; it truly has become a scientific superpower.
澳大利亚战略政策研究所的研究结果与《自然》杂志最新研究机构排名相符，该排名追踪了145种科学期刊的文章。就研究产出而言，全球前10名研究机构中有9家来自中国，仅哈佛大学位列第一梯队。中国正在实现科研的规模化生产；它确实已成为一个科学超级大国。
Published research, though, does not automatically translate into technological capability. Moreover, the location of research expertise does not always map with successful commercialisation of technology — as a long line of frustrated British scientists can attest.
然而，已发表的研究成果并不会自动转化为技术能力。此外，研究专长的所在地并不总是与技术成功商业化相匹配——这一点许多受挫的英国科学家可以作证。
However, a separate report from the Special Competitive Studies Project in the US earlier this year also highlighted the striking progress that China has made in adopting many frontier technologies. According to the SCSP’s staff assessment, the US is still leading in semiconductors, synthetic biology and quantum computing while China dominates in advanced batteries, 5G and commercial drones. But the most contested, and arguably most consequential, area is artificial intelligence.
不过，美国特别竞争研究项目今年早些时候发布的一份独立报告也强调了中国在采用许多前沿技术方面取得的显著进展。根据该机构工作人员的评估，美国仍在半导体、合成生物学和量子计算领域保持领先，而中国则在先进电池、5G和商用无人机领域占据主导地位。但竞争最激烈、且可以说最具决定性意义的领域是人工智能。
President Donald Trump has said that the US will do “whatever it takes” to lead the world in AI. And the big US tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, are making colossal investments to fulfil that ambition. OpenAI alone is planning to invest $400bn over the next few years to build out its Stargate data centres across the US. Last month, the Trump administration launched the Genesis Mission to boost the private AI sector by sharing the public data sets and computing resources of the country’s 17 national laboratories. “We’re essentially pitting our private capitalists against this nation state of China. The stakeholders here have two very different sets of resources, attributes, strengths and weaknesses,” says David Lin, a senior adviser to the SCSP.
美国总统特朗普曾表示，美国将“不惜一切代价”在人工智能领域引领世界。包括OpenAI、Alphabet、微软、Meta和亚马逊在内的美国科技巨头正为实现这一雄心投入巨额资金。仅OpenAI就计划未来数年投资4000亿美元，在全美建设其“星际之门”数据中心。上月，特朗普政府启动“创世纪计划”，通过共享美国17个国家实验室的公共数据集和计算资源来推动私营人工智能领域发展。“我们实质上是在让本国私人资本与中国这个国家主体进行较量。相关利益方拥有截然不同的资源禀赋、属性特征及优势短板，”美国特别竞争研究项目高级顾问林戴维表示。
But the US and China are also adopting very different approaches to adopting AI. The big US companies mostly favour massive, proprietary, “closed-weights” models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which may be best suited to achieving generalisable intelligence. By contrast, Chinese AI companies favour smaller, cheaper (and arguably less safe) “open-weights” models, such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, that can be more readily adapted by developers. In part, China is making a virtue of necessity because US export restrictions have denied it access to the state-of-the-art silicon chips needed to build the most powerful foundation models. But it also reflects China’s priority in rapidly diffusing the technology.
但美中两国在人工智能应用路径上存在显著差异。美国科技巨头大多青睐ChatGPT和Gemini这类庞大、专有、“闭源权重”的模型，这类架构可能最适于实现通用智能。相比之下，中国人工智能企业更倾向于采用DeepSeek和阿里通义千问等更轻量化、成本更低（且安全性存疑）的“开源权重”模型，这类模型更便于开发者进行适配改造。这种差异部分源于中国的现实条件——美国出口管制使其无法获得构建最强大基础模型所需的尖端芯片，但同时也反映出中国优先考虑技术快速普及的战略取向。
Michael Power, the former global strategist of the investment firm Ninety One, reckons the US is making a “catastrophic strategic error” in betting so heavily on giant closed AI models. “China’s model is turning out to be far more effective in terms of usable compute in the real world,” Power tells me, especially considering the country’s lower energy costs. Even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has expressed his personal concern that “we have been on the wrong side of history here”.
投资管理公司NinetyOne的前全球策略师迈克尔-鲍尔认为，美国在封闭式大型人工智能模型上投入如此巨大，是在犯“灾难性的战略错误”。鲍尔告诉我，尤其是在考虑到中国较低的能源成本的情况下，“中国的模式在现实世界中的可用计算能力方面，结果证明要有效得多”。就连OpenAI的首席执行官萨姆-奥特曼也表达了他个人的担忧，即“我们站在了历史错误的一边”。
A recent study by MIT and Hugging Face found that Chinese open models have now overtaken comparable US models in terms of global adoption. Many US companies, including Airbnb, have become fans of the “fast and cheap” Qwen. In this critical area too the question arises: can the west catch up with China?
麻省理工学院与美国机器学习公司Hugging Face的近期研究发现，中国开源模型在全球采用率方面现已超越同类美国模型。包括爱彼迎在内的许多美国企业已成为“快速且廉价”的通义千问模型的拥趸。在这一关键领域同样浮现出这样的疑问：西方能否追上中国的步伐？
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