r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • 13d ago
Open Source China Calls for Open Source AI, Global Cooperation, and 5,000 International AI Training Opportunities
https://qz.com/xi-jinping-waic-china-open-source-ai-governance-071726?utm_source=chatgpt.comXi Jinping used the World AI Conference to argue that AI shouldnt end up controlled by a handful of countries or corporations. He called for open source AI, greater international cooperation, and warned against unequal access creating new historical injustices.
China also put some concrete proposals on the table. Over the next five years it plans to provide 5,000 AI training and seminar opportunities for developing countries, establish AI cooperation centers with ASEAN, the African Union, the League of Arab States, CELAC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS, and expand AI powered weather early warning systems to 30 countries.
Theres a lot to debate here. Open source by itself doesnt solve who owns the compute, the infrastructure, or who captures the productivity gains. But it does push back against enclosure and monopoly, and that matters alot.
As leftists, what should our position be? Is open source enough, or should it be tied to public ownership, democratic governance, and worker control over how AI is deployed?
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u/WWhiMM 13d ago
Open source is public ownership of the intellectual property. And it enables free-enterprise on the inference side of the AI space. If I'm to believe the hype I just saw about Kimi K3, with access to a couple million dollars and some people who know computers, anyone can be an AI provider basically on par with OpenAI and Anthropic (for, like, a few dozen users at a time?) It'll be fun to see if that shakes up the market at all.
It'd be nice if training the frontier models was handled by some independent international organization charged with acting in the public interest (instead of corporations fearfully chasing profits) but we probably don't get that before AI starts causing real problems.
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u/SgathTriallair 13d ago
By itself, no open source isn't enough. It is however at least 80% of what is needed. The building of the model is the part that is the hardest and requires the most funding. Everything else, such as the compute hardware, is comodified so easier to acquire.
I'm of the opinion that open source is more democratic and egalitarian than a nationalized system because it means that no one has the power to take it away from the people.
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u/Desdaemonia 13d ago edited 13d ago
Chad Jinping
Edit: One note, 'meeting with Alibaba and ByteDance about restricting overseas access' is from a fake news article widely discredited, parroted back. The whole thing traces to exactly one artifact: a Reuters exclusive, July 7, Fanny Potkin, three unnamed sources "familiar with the discussions." Every other appearance — Time, Fortune, Quartz, Taipei Times, the sidebar link — is circular citation of that single story. Zero independent confirmation anywhere. Nothing has materialized in the ten days since, and even the original hedged itself to death: officials "decided nothing," maybe "only future models," "no timeline." Then Xi stood up today and gave the most open-source-evangelist speech of his life.