Making sense of the panic over Chinese AI
Making sense of the panic over Chinese AI
解读围绕中国人工智能的恐慌
The launch of the latest AI model from a Chinese company — Moonshot AI’s Kimi — reignited debates around American competitiveness and open versus proprietary AI. While there was plenty of conversation on social media, it seems the debate is also happening behind the scenes in Washington, D.C., where OpenAI and Anthropic have reportedly lobbied regulators with concern about open Chinese models. 中国公司月之暗面（Moonshot AI）推出的最新人工智能模型 Kimi，重新点燃了关于美国竞争力以及开源与闭源 AI 之争的讨论。虽然社交媒体上对此议论纷纷，但这场辩论似乎也在华盛顿特区的幕后进行着——据报道，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 已经就中国开源模型引发的担忧向监管机构进行了游说。
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed why this seems to be such a hot button issue. Beyond suggesting that certain folks should “touch grass” rather than spending their weekends arguing on X, Sean noted that in many ways, this “feels like we’re seeing repeats of prior freakouts,” with everyone in Silicon Valley “expecting that something is going to arrive and blow everything else away.” 在 TechCrunch 的《Equity》播客最新一期节目中，Kirsten Korosec、Sean O’Kane 和我讨论了为什么这会成为一个如此敏感的话题。除了建议某些人应该“回归现实”（touch grass），而不是把周末浪费在 X（原 Twitter）上的争论中之外，Sean 指出，在很多方面，这“感觉就像我们正在重演之前的恐慌”，硅谷的每个人都“期待着某种东西横空出世，并彻底颠覆一切”。
And Kirsten noted that putting heavy restrictions on Chinese AI models could primarily benefit a handful of companies: “Are we accelerating and ensuring that Americans win the AI race, or are we ensuring that certain frontier labs do better than others? Keep reading for an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Kirsten 指出，对中国 AI 模型施加严厉限制可能主要只会让少数几家公司受益：“我们是在加速并确保美国赢得 AI 竞赛，还是在确保某些前沿实验室比其他实验室发展得更好？”以下是我们对话的节选，为篇幅和清晰度进行了编辑。
Anthony Ha: For folks who have followed the discourse around Chinese AI, this will probably be very, very familiar from the launch of DeepSeek, where basically a Chinese model comes out; on some benchmarks, it does as well, or at least seems competitive with some of the frontier models; and a certain portion of the tech industry loses their mind. Some of this [debate] got extra scrutiny because one of the people posting about it was [an executive] at OpenAI. But in general, there [is] this recurring question of: Can Chinese companies beat US companies, at least in some aspects, and do it much more cheaply and in a much more open way? Anthony Ha： 对于那些一直关注中国 AI 讨论的人来说，这可能与 DeepSeek 发布时的情况非常相似：基本上是一个中国模型发布了；在某些基准测试中，它的表现与一些前沿模型相当，或者至少看起来具有竞争力；然后科技行业的某一部分人就彻底失控了。这场辩论之所以受到额外关注，是因为其中一位发帖者是 OpenAI 的高管。但总的来说，这里存在一个反复出现的问题：中国公司能否在至少某些方面击败美国公司，并且以更低廉的成本和更开放的方式做到这一点？
Sean O’Kane: Yeah, there are many elements of this that feel like we’re seeing repeats of prior freakouts. I think one of my favorites is: Everybody is so ready [for] and so expecting that something is going to arrive and blow everything else away. And I think my favorite example of that this past week was people showing off that “My gosh, Kimi made in 30 minutes an entire replication of macOS.” And yeah, it made a pretty impressive graphical reproduction of what macOS looks like, but it’s not an OS. We keep seeing these things happen over and over again, where everybody’s so jumpy in the tech industry. And I think in particular, with some of the Chinese models that come out, there’s this expectation, and I think this gets to the core of why people reacted the way they reacted last weekend. (Also, by the way: Go outside, touch grass, it’s the weekend. Everybody in the industry was trading barbs on Twitter all weekend.) But this jumpiness is really interesting to me because we’re now a week out and I don’t think anybody’s feeling like the end is nigh like they were a week ago. Sean O’Kane： 是的，这其中有很多因素让人感觉我们正在重演之前的恐慌。我认为我最喜欢的一个例子是：每个人都准备好了，并且非常期待某种东西会突然出现并摧毁一切。我认为过去一周我最喜欢的例子是人们炫耀说：“天哪，Kimi 在 30 分钟内就完整复制了 macOS。”是的，它确实做出了一个令人印象深刻的 macOS 图形界面复刻，但它并不是一个操作系统。我们不断看到这些事情反复发生，科技行业里的每个人都如此神经质。我认为特别是对于一些发布的中国模型，存在这种预期，我认为这触及了人们上周末做出那种反应的核心原因。（顺便说一句：去户外走走，回归现实吧，毕竟是周末。整个行业的人整个周末都在 Twitter 上互相攻击。）但这种神经质对我来说非常有趣，因为现在已经过去一周了，我不认为还有人像一周前那样觉得“末日将至”。
Kirsten Korosec: We have a really great story by one of our reporters, Tim Fernholz, who tries to unpack the psychosis around this here in the United States. He points to a number of reasons. And concludes — and I don’t want to conclude it for him, but I think that there’s one that rises more to the top than others. There’s concerns that these Chinese open weight models might have an implicit bias towards China, there’s another worry about security risks and guardrails. But there’s also a pretty big idea here, which is protectionism, and who is going to quote-unquote “win the race”? Is it going to be the US or China? And that seems to be driving a lot of what the fear is. I don’t know, Anthony, if you agree with that? Kirsten Korosec： 我们的一位记者 Tim Fernholz 写了一篇非常棒的报道，试图剖析美国国内围绕此事的这种“精神错乱”。他指出了许多原因，并得出了结论——我不想替他下结论，但我认为其中一个原因比其他原因更突出。人们担心这些中国的开源权重模型可能对中国存在隐性偏见，还有人担心安全风险和防护栏问题。但这里还有一个非常重要的概念，那就是保护主义，以及谁将“赢得这场竞赛”？是美国还是中国？这似乎是导致大部分恐惧的原因。Anthony，我不知道你是否同意这一点？
Anthony: I completely agree. I think the China aspect always adds this certain level of hysteria. And that’s not to say that people shouldn’t be concerned about how the U.S. stacks up against China across different industries. But it gets so amped up. The other thing this reminds me of is the discussion around TikTok a few years ago. And again, it wasn’t that I thought that the concerns around TikTok were totally made up, but that the level of how panicked people got — it seems as soon as you add the word China to any discussion, things just ramp up dramatically. And then in this case, it’s linked to this discussion about open [weights] and this idea that AI is so powerful and so dangerous that the only way we can control it is with these proprietary models from these American frontier companies. Obviously, most people saying this [have] reasons why they want to say that. David Sacks, who was the AI czar for the Trump administration [and] now has a different role in the Trump administration, was shouting on X about how, “I can’t believe people are opposing data centers, we’re tying ourselves in knots, there’s too much regulation.” And so it’s a way to argue for the positions that they already had around AI. “My gosh, if China beats us, that’s unthinkable, so you have to do what I want to do anyway.” Anthony： 我完全同意。我认为“中国”这个因素总是会增加某种程度的歇斯底里。这并不是说人们不应该关注美国在不同行业中与中国的对比。但这种情绪被过度放大了。另一件让我想起这件事的是几年前围绕 TikTok 的讨论。同样，并不是说我认为围绕 TikTok 的担忧完全是捏造的，而是人们恐慌的程度——似乎只要在任何讨论中加上“中国”这个词，事情就会急剧升级。在这种情况下，它与关于开源（权重）的讨论联系在一起，即 AI 太强大、太危险，我们控制它的唯一方法就是使用这些美国前沿公司的闭源模型。显然，大多数这么说的人都有他们想这么说的理由。曾担任特朗普政府 AI 沙皇、现在在特朗普政府中担任不同职务的 David Sacks 在 X 上大喊：“我无法相信人们竟然反对数据中心，我们正在作茧自缚，监管太多了。”所以，这是一种为他们既有的 AI 立场辩护的方式。“天哪，如果中国击败了我们，那是不可想象的，所以无论如何你都必须按照我说的去做。”
Kirsten: Right, and if you were to put across-the-board bans on Chinese open weight models — I’m not saying that there aren’t real concerns here, but let’s just play that out. If we were to do that, it would benefit models created by OpenAI, for instance, and it would force enterprises to use those as opposed to using models like Kimi. So you really have to ask the question: Are we accelerating and ensuring that Americans win the AI race, or are we ensuring that certain frontier labs do better than others? Kirsten： 没错，如果你要对中国的开源权重模型实施全面禁令——我并不是说这里没有真正的担忧，但让我们推演一下。如果我们这样做，它将使 OpenAI 等公司创建的模型受益，并迫使企业使用这些模型，而不是使用像 Kimi 这样的模型。所以你真的必须问一个问题：我们是在加速并确保美国赢得 AI 竞赛，还是在确保某些前沿实验室比其他实验室发展得更好？
Sean: At this point, we should say a lot of this discussion really got kicked off by the head of strategic futures at OpenAI, Dean Ball, who was the first one to come out with this really long post mentioning some of these concerns. Part of me thinks the reaction to this was because people disagreed with what Dean wrote. Part of me also thinks the reaction was driven by the fact that he kind of just said the thing out loud. He basically said the US should create regulatory FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — and mu Sean： 在这一点上，我们应该说，这场讨论的很大一部分确实是由 OpenAI 战略未来主管 Dean Ball 发起的，他是第一个发布那篇长文并提到其中一些担忧的人。我一方面认为人们对此的反应是因为他们不同意 Dean 所写的内容。另一方面，我也认为这种反应是因为他把大家心里的想法说了出来。他基本上说美国应该制造监管方面的 FUD（恐惧、不确定性和怀疑），并……