Early this morning, according to CNBCOpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns that the U.S. may be underestimating China's role in the AI The complexity and seriousness of progress in this area, and the fact that export controls alone may not be a reliable solution, "I am very worried about China".
He mentioned that the AI race between the U.S. and China is intricate and its implications are much more important than simply being ahead or behind in terms of scores. Altman noted that "China is likely to develop faster in terms of its reasoning capabilities, in addition to multiple dimensions such as research, products, and so on," he said.So you can't simply say who is ahead, the US or China."
While the U.S. continues to tighten semiconductor export controls on China, Altman doesn't think this one policy will allow technological realities to catch up. When asked if it would be reassuring if fewer GPUs went into China, its skeptical:"My gut feeling is that it won't work."
Altman added that"You can control the export of something, but maybe it's not the right thing ...... Maybe people will build fabs or other alternatives."
In the interview, Altman also unveiled why OpenAI is releasing two open-weighted language models. It stated that"It's clear that if we don't, the world will soon be built largely on China's open source model."
Despite OpenAI's longstanding refusal to fully open-source its own technology, Altman said that competition from Chinese models, especially those like the DeepSeek Such open source models were a major factor in OpenAI's recent decision to release its own open weighting model. "It was certainly a factor in our decision, not the only one, but it had a significant impact."