China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself
China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself
中国的 AI 模型让特朗普的 AI 阵营陷入内斗
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Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed insults at the country’s leading AI companies. David Sacks, the president’s AI and crypto “czar” until March, branded Anthropic’s models as “lobotomized” and “woke.” Emil Michael, a top Pentagon official, called OpenAI’s new head of strategic futures a “supreme village idiot.” 上周末，几位特朗普总统现任及前任的 AI 顾问公开抨击了美国领先的 AI 公司。曾担任总统 AI 与加密货币“沙皇”直至今年 3 月的戴维·萨克斯（David Sacks），将 Anthropic 的模型斥为“被切除前额叶的”和“觉醒派（woke）”的产物。五角大楼高官埃米尔·迈克尔（Emil Michael）则称 OpenAI 新任战略未来主管为“顶级村夫”。
It began because no one can agree on what to do about Kimi, a free, open source model that Chinese AI company Moonshot launched last week. It appears to rival the intelligence of models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are very much not free. Kimi and other Chinese models like it pose a real problem for Trump. And they’re dividing the top AI strategists in his orbit into factions. 这场争端源于各方对如何应对 Kimi 无法达成共识——Kimi 是中国 AI 公司月之暗面（Moonshot）上周发布的一款免费开源模型。该模型的智能水平似乎足以媲美 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的模型，而后者显然并非免费。Kimi 及其他类似的中国模型对特朗普构成了现实挑战，并导致其身边的顶级 AI 战略家们分裂成了不同派系。
Every time a new smart, free model from China like Kimi gets released, US companies see less reason to fork out money to access models from Anthropic or OpenAI. Given that enthusiasm for these and other AI companies is driving an outsized share of economic growth, China’s AI models create both economic and political problems for the president. They are “a threat for an administration that really doesn’t want more economic bad news,” Anton Leicht, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote on X. They’ve already rattled US stocks. 每当像 Kimi 这样智能且免费的中国模型发布时，美国公司支付高额费用去使用 Anthropic 或 OpenAI 模型的动力就会减弱。鉴于对这些 AI 公司的热情正驱动着经济增长的很大一部分，中国的 AI 模型为总统带来了经济和政治双重难题。卡内基国际和平基金会研究员安东·莱希特（Anton Leicht）在 X 上写道，对于一个“非常不希望再听到经济坏消息的政府来说，它们是一个威胁”。这些模型已经让美国股市感到不安。
What is Trump to do? First, consider that this is all happening just a week after New York imposed the country’s first state ban on new data centers. There is growing distrust of AI companies, and I imagine a not-insignificant share of Americans would have little sympathy for OpenAI or Anthropic as they fend off cheaper competitors, and would say it’s not the government’s job to protect their interests. 特朗普该怎么办？首先，考虑到这一切发生在一周前，当时纽约州刚刚实施了全美首个针对新建数据中心的禁令。人们对 AI 公司的不信任感日益增长，我想有相当一部分美国人对 OpenAI 或 Anthropic 在抵御廉价竞争对手时的困境并无同情心，他们会认为保护这些公司的利益并非政府的职责。
On this point, they’d see a sliver of agreement (and really just a sliver) with David Sacks, who on July 19 criticized top AI companies that “want the government to eliminate their open source competition.” He has also argued that Chinese AI models have become popular because they come with fewer restrictions on how people can use them (putting aside the built-in state censorship). 在这一点上，他们与戴维·萨克斯（David Sacks）有一丝共鸣（确实只有一丝）。萨克斯曾在 7 月 19 日批评那些“希望政府消灭其开源竞争对手”的顶级 AI 公司。他还认为，中国 AI 模型之所以受欢迎，是因为它们在使用限制上较少（撇开内置的国家审查不谈）。
Sacks, however, is out of a job. He no longer has a formal role advising Trump, and his position that more open AI is better has been largely replaced in the administration by one that sees a larger role for government intervention. The thinking behind this view is that because AI models have gotten strong enough to pose threats to national security, the government must control how they’re used. This position has fueled the new White House review process that aims to vet AI models’ security before they’re released. 然而，萨克斯已经离职。他不再担任特朗普的正式顾问，他关于“AI 越开放越好”的立场，在政府内部已基本被“政府应发挥更大干预作用”的观点所取代。这种观点背后的逻辑是：由于 AI 模型已强大到足以威胁国家安全，政府必须控制其使用方式。这一立场推动了白宫新的审查流程，旨在对 AI 模型在发布前进行安全评估。
Dean Ball, a former Trump AI advisor who now works for OpenAI, criticized it over the weekend as a “de facto licensing regime for frontier AI.” Ball predicted Trump may solve his Chinese open source problem with a bit of soft power, perhaps by making US companies afraid to use models like Kimi. That drew a response from Michael, who, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has been the agency’s main liaison with AI companies. Michael called Ball the AI industry’s “supreme village idiot,” bristling at the suggestion that the government would quietly strong-arm companies rather than, as Michael put it, go through “the democratic process not some Deep State scheme.” 曾任特朗普 AI 顾问、现就职于 OpenAI 的迪恩·鲍尔（Dean Ball）上周末批评该流程是“针对前沿 AI 的事实上的许可制度”。鲍尔预测，特朗普可能会通过一些软实力手段来解决中国开源模型带来的问题，比如让美国公司不敢使用像 Kimi 这样的模型。这引来了迈克尔的回应。迈克尔与国防部长皮特·海格塞斯（Pete Hegseth）一起，一直是该机构与 AI 公司之间的主要联络人。迈克尔称鲍尔是 AI 行业的“顶级村夫”，并对“政府会悄悄强迫公司”的说法感到愤怒，他表示政府应该走“民主程序，而不是什么深层政府（Deep State）的阴谋”。
Left out of the conversation has been how a model like Kimi got so good in the first place. For much of the Biden administration and even the beginning of Trump’s second administration, keeping China from getting top chips was a priority. Those export controls have loosened—Trump made the controversial decision to allow Nvidia to sell more chips to China, in exchange for the US government taking a cut—and the government has alleged that some chip smuggling has taken place. 这场讨论中被忽略的一点是：像 Kimi 这样的模型最初是如何变得如此强大的。在拜登政府的大部分时间里，甚至在特朗普第二任期的初期，阻止中国获取顶级芯片一直是重中之重。这些出口管制已经放松——特朗普做出了一个有争议的决定，允许英伟达向中国出售更多芯片，以换取美国政府的分成——政府还声称发生了一些芯片走私行为。
But China nonetheless has limited computing power, and it’s not clear what chips the company behind Kimi used to train the model. It’s possible that the process involved some distillation, a practice in which AI models are trained on the outputs of existing AI models. OpenAI and Anthropic have long complained that Chinese AI companies do this, and they have requested government help to put a stop to it. In April, they got it, when the Trump administration announced a series of efforts to curb the practice. 但中国的计算能力毕竟有限，目前尚不清楚 Kimi 背后的公司使用了什么芯片来训练该模型。训练过程可能涉及“蒸馏（distillation）”，即利用现有 AI 模型的输出结果来训练新模型。OpenAI 和 Anthropic 长期以来一直抱怨中国 AI 公司这样做，并请求政府介入制止。今年 4 月，特朗普政府宣布了一系列旨在遏制这种做法的措施，他们如愿以偿。
But Kimi is out there and free, and it is nearly as good as the Anthropic model the US government deemed so powerful that it was briefly shut down because it threatened national security. The weekend’s sparring suggests many in Trump’s orbit see that as a wake-up call. But nobody can agree on what for. 然而，Kimi 依然存在且免费，其性能几乎与 Anthropic 的模型不相上下——而后者曾因被美国政府认为过于强大、威胁国家安全而一度被叫停。周末的交锋表明，特朗普阵营中的许多人将其视为一个警钟。但对于这究竟意味着什么，没人能达成共识。