Bill Gates is very impressed with China’s AI growth
Bill Gates Highlights China’s AI Advancements Amid U.S. Concerns
Bill Gates has acknowledged the significant advancements in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector, noting that both China and the United States possess several institutions capable of producing cutting-edge AI models. In a recent interview in New York, Gates stated, “Depending on how you measure it, both China and the United States each have four or more institutions whose models are capable of maintaining state-of-the-art levels. The gap between the top-scoring model and the other seven leading models is actually not that large.”
Gates’ remarks come at a time when the U.S. government has been cautioning American companies about China’s increasing capabilities in AI technology. This conversation about AI advances coincides with the announcement from the Gates Foundation of a $1 billion investment in AI over the next two years. The funding aims to facilitate the deployment of AI tools in underprivileged countries, focusing on sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture.
Bill Gates says China and US are in AI ‘super competition’
Gates also proposed that China and the US each provide around 5% of their data-centre computing power for use by poorer countries.
Gates said China and the US each have four or more institutions with models capable of maintaining state-of-the-art performance, while also describing the two countries as being in a “super competition” over AI talent and computing power. Gates also said the world’s eight leading large language models have all moved beyond the best performance seen about four months earlier. He described the AI race between China and the US as a “super competition”, with both countries competing for talent and computing power. Bill Gates said the competition between the two countries could have an unexpected benefit for developing nations. He said the availability of more high-performing models could give low-income countries, including those in Africa, access to cheaper AI tools. Gates said some African countries already borrow servers from Chinese partners to run AI models remotely. He said the delay in communication is still low enough for many uses. He compared the idea to foreign aid and said the computing resources could support healthcare, agriculture and education.
During the interview, Bill Gates was asked about the progress of Chinese open-source AI models and gave a strong assessment of the country’s development. He, however, did not name the institutions. Open-source AI models, he added, provide “great flexibility. He suggested that African countries should focus their own limited resources on areas where local development is most important, such as language support and local data.