OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the United States may be underestimating China’s significant advances in artificial intelligence, warning that Washington’s technology restrictions are no impediment to that progress.
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“I’m worried about China,” the 40-year-old Altman was quoted as saying on Monday in a report by American business news channel CNBC. He indicated that the AI arms race between the US and China was more complex than it appeared.
“There’s inference capacity, where China probably can build faster,” he said. “There’s research, there’s product; a lot of layers to the whole thing. I don’t think it’ll be as simple as: is the US or China ahead?”
His assessment marks the latest sign that Chinese AI companies have been narrowing the gap with their US peers by using an open-source approach, making the source code of AI models available for third-party developers to use, modify and distribute.
Open-source models from Chinese start-ups like DeepSeek and MoonshotAI, along with those from mainland Big Tech firms led by Alibaba Group Holding, have seen increased adoption across the industry on the back of their low-cost appeal and innovative features. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
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Altman’s remarks also echoed the sentiment expressed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in June, when he warned that Huawei Technologies was in a position to expand its semiconductor business even with US chip export curbs.