纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国AI大混战背后想超越美国又离不开美国

In November, a year after ChatGPT’s release, a relatively unknown Chinese start-up leaped to the top of a leaderboard that judged the abilities of open-source artificial intelligence systems.

去年ChatGPT发布一年后的11月，一家相对不为人所知的中国初创公司跃居开源人工智能系统能力排行榜的榜首。

The Chinese firm, 01.AI, was only eight months old but had deep-pocketed backers and a $1 billion valuation and was founded by a well-known investor and technologist, Kai-Fu Lee. In interviews, Mr. Lee presented his A.I. system as an alternative to options like Meta’s generative A.I. model, called LLaMA.

当时这家名为01.AI的中国公司成立仅八个月，却拥有资金雄厚的支持者和10亿美元的估值，其创始人是知名投资人和技术专家李开复。在采访中，李开复说他的人工智能系统是Meta的LLaMA这样的生成式人工智能模型的替代方案。

There was just one twist: Some of the technology in 01.AI’s system came from LLaMA. Mr. Lee’s start-up then built on Meta’s technology, training its system with new data to make it more powerful.

这里面有个小问题：01.AI系统中的部分技术来自LLaMA。李开复的新公司以Meta的技术为基础，用新数据训练系统，使其变得更加强大。

The situation is emblematic of a reality that many in China openly admit. Even as the country races to build generative A.I., Chinese companies are relying almost entirely on underlying systems from the United States. China now lags the United States in generative A.I. by at least a year and may be falling further behind, according to more than a dozen tech industry insiders and leading engineers, setting the stage for a new phase in the cutthroat technological competition between the two nations that some have likened to a cold war.

这种状况反映了在中国常常得到公开承认的现实。尽管中国正在努力建设人工智能，但中国公司几乎完全依赖于美国的底层系统。据十多位科技行业内部人士和顶尖工程师称，中国目前在生成式人工智能方面落后美国至少一年，而且可能会进一步落后，这为两国之间残酷的技术竞争进入新阶段创造了条件，有人将这种竞争比作冷战。

“Chinese companies are under tremendous pressure to keep abreast of U.S. innovations,” said Chris Nicholson, an investor with the venture capital firm Page One Ventures who focuses on A.I. technologies. The release of ChatGPT was “yet another Sputnik moment that China felt it had to respond to.”

风险投资公司Page One Ventures的投资人克里斯·尼科尔森专注于人工智能技术，他说：“中国公司面临着跟上美国创新的巨大压力。”ChatGPT的发布是“又一个斯普特尼克时刻，中国认为它必须做出回应”。

Jenny Xiao, a partner at Leonis Capital, an investment firm that focuses on A.I.-powered companies, said the A.I. models that Chinese companies build from scratch “aren’t very good,” leading to many Chinese firms often using “fine-tuned versions of Western models.” She estimated China was two to three years behind the United States in generative A.I. developments.

专注于人工智能公司的投资公司Leonis Capital的合伙人珍妮·肖（音）说，中国公司从零开始建立的人工智能模型“不是很好”，所以许多中国公司经常使用“西方模型的微调版”。她估计，中国在人工智能发展方面比美国落后两到三年。

The jockeying for A.I. primacy has huge implications. Breakthroughs in generative A.I. could tip the global technological balance of power, increasing people’s productivity, aiding industries and leading to future innovations, even as nations struggle with the technology’s risks.

对人工智能主导地位的争夺影响深远。尽管各国都在努力应对人工智能的风险，但人工智能技术的突破可能会改变全球技术力量的平衡，提高人们的生产力，帮助各行各业，并带来未来的创新。

As Chinese firms aim to catch up by turning to open-source A.I. models from the United States, Washington is in a difficult spot. Even as the United States has tried to slow China’s advancements by limiting the sale of microchips and curbing investments, it has not held back the practice of openly releasing software to encourage its adoption.

在中国企业转向美国的开源人工智能模式以求迎头赶上的同时，华盛顿却处于一个尴尬境地。尽管一直试图通过限制微芯片销售和遏制投资来减缓中国的进步，美国无法阻止企业为了促进软件的普及而选择公开发布的做法。

For China, the newfound reliance on A.I. systems from the United States — primarily Meta’s LLaMA — has fueled deeper questions about the country’s innovation model, which in recent decades surprised many by turning out world-beating firms like Alibaba and ByteDance despite Beijing’s authoritarian controls.

对中国来说，对美国人工智能系统——主要是Meta的LLaMA——的新发现的依赖引发了对中国创新模式更深层次的质疑。近几十年来，尽管中国政府实行专制控制，但还是涌现出了像阿里巴巴和字节跳动这样的世界级企业，令许多人感到惊讶。

“When Chinese companies are leveraging American open-source technologies to play catch-up, the questions become very complicated — wrapped up in issues of national security and geopolitics,” said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington professor who specializes in A.I. and the founder of TrueMedia.org, a nonprofit working to identify disinformation online in political campaigns.

华盛顿大学专门研究人工智能的教授、致力于识别政治活动中的网络虚假信息的非营利组织TrueMedia.org的创始人奥伦·埃齐奥尼说：“当中国公司利用美国的开源技术来追赶时，问题就变得非常复杂，被国家安全和地缘政治问题裹挟。”

In an emailed statement, Mr. Lee, 01.AI’s founder, said his startup’s A.I. model was built on LLaMA just “like most other A.I. companies,” adding that using open-source technologies is a standard practice. He said his company had trained its A.I. model from scratch, using its own data and algorithms. Those were “the main determinants” of the “excellent performance” of 01.AI’s model, Mr. Lee said.

01.AI的创始人李开复在电子邮件声明中说，他的初创公司的人工智能模型是建立在LLaMA上的，就像“其他大多数人工智能公司一样”，并补充说，使用开源技术是一种标准做法。他说，他的公司使用自己的数据和算法，从零开始训练人工智能模型。这些都是01.AI“表现出色”的“主要决定因素”。

Meta pointed to comments by Nick Clegg, who leads global affairs, in which he said openly sharing the company’s A.I. models helped spread its values and standards, and in turn helped secure American leadership.

Meta指出，负责全球事务的尼克·克莱格在评论中表示，公开分享该公司的人工智能模型有助于传播其价值观和标准，进而有助于确保美国的领导地位。

(The New York Times has sued the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

（《纽约时报》起诉ChatGPT的制造商OpenAI及其合作伙伴微软侵犯了与人工智能系统相关新闻内容的版权。）

A.I. has long been a priority in China. After the A.I. tool AlphaGo defeated two top players of the board game Go in 2016 and 2017, Chinese policymakers set out an ambitious plan to lead the world in technology by 2030. The government pledged billions to researchers and companies focused on A.I.

长期以来，人工智能一直是中国的重点。人工智能工具AlphaGo在2016年和2017年击败了两名顶级围棋棋手后，中国的政策制定者制定了一项雄心勃勃的计划，要在2030年之前引领世界科技。政府承诺向专注人工智能的研究人员和公司提供数十亿美元的资金。

When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, many Chinese firms were being hamstrung by a regulatory crackdown from Beijing that discouraged experimentation without government approval. Chinese tech companies were also burdened by censorship rules designed to manage public opinion and mute major opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.

当OpenAI于2022年11月发布ChatGPT时，许多中国公司正受到北京监管部门的打击，后者不鼓励未经政府批准的实验。中国科技公司还受到审查规则的拖累，这些规则旨在管理公众舆论，压制反对中国共产党的主要力量。

Chinese companies with the resources to build a generative A.I. model faced a dilemma. If they created a chatbot that said the wrong thing, its makers would pay the price. And no one could be sure what might tumble out of a chatbot’s digital mouth.

有资源建立人工智能生成模型的中国公司面临两难境地。如果他们创造的聊天机器人说了错话，那么它的制造者就会付出代价。没有人能确定聊天机器人的数字嘴巴里会吐出些什么。

“It’s just not possible to get rid of all the problematic ways these systems can express themselves,” said Andrew Ng, who teaches computer science at Stanford and was a former executive at Baidu, the Chinese search giant.

“要摆脱这些系统存在问题的表达方式是不可能的，”在斯坦福大学教授计算机科学、曾在中国搜索巨头百度担任高管的吴恩达说。

Chinese tech giants were also grappling with new regulations that dictate how A.I. models could be trained. The rules limit the data sets that could be used to train A.I. models and the applications that were acceptable, and also set requirements for registering A.I. models with the government.

中国的科技巨头们也在努力应对关于如何训练人工智能模型的新规定。这些规定限制了可用于训练人工智能模型的数据集和可接受的应用，还规定了向政府注册人工智能模型的要求。

“It is both more difficult and more risky to innovate in generative A.I. in the current regulatory regime, which is still a moving target,” said Kevin Xu, the U.S.-based founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in A.I. ventures.

“在目前的监管体制下，在生成式人工智能方面进行创新更加困难，风险也更大，这仍然是一个不断变化的目标，”投资于人工智能企业的对冲基金互联资本的美国创始人凯文·徐（音）说。

Tech investors in China have also pushed for quick turnarounds from A.I., which has meant money has flowed to easy-to-execute applications instead of more ambitious goals focused on fundamental research, said Yiran Chen, a John Cocke Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. As much as 50 percent of China’s A.I. investment has gone into computer vision technology, which is required for surveillance, instead of building foundation models for generative A.I., he said.

杜克大学约翰·科克电气与计算机工程杰出教授陈怡然说，中国的科技投资者也在推动人工智能尽快转亏为盈，这意味着资金流向易于执行的应用，而不是更具抱负、专注于基础研究的目标。他说，中国对人工智能的投资中，有多达50%投向了监控所需的计算机视觉技术，而不是为生成式人工智能建立基础模型。

Now Baidu, Alibaba, the dairy company Mengniu and the tutoring firm TAL Education have all jumped into the generative A.I. race in China, leading Chinese media to coin the phrase “the battle of 100 models” to describe the frenzy.

如今，百度、阿里巴巴、乳业公司蒙牛和家教公司好未来教育都加入了中国的人工智能竞赛，中国媒体用“百模大战”来形容这种狂热。

Some have criticized the free-for-all as publicity stunts that add unnecessary competition. In a panel discussion last year, Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive, described having hundreds of basic A.I. models as a waste.

一些人批评这种大混战是宣传噱头，增加了不必要的竞争。在去年的一次小组讨论中，百度首席执行官李彦宏认为，拥有数百个基础人工智能模型是一种浪费。

“More resources should be allocated to applications in various industries, especially considering the limitations on our computing power,” he said.

“尤其在我们算力还受限制的情况下，更多的资源应该放在去探索跟各行各业的结合，”他说。

Success has been elusive. When Baidu introduced its chatbot, Ernie, in March, the “live” demonstration was revealed to be prerecorded. Baidu’s stock plummeted 10 percent that day.

通向成功的路始终难以捉摸。今年3月，当百度推出其聊天机器人文心一言时，“现场”演示被曝是预先录制的。百度的股价当天暴跌了10%。

Despite the setback, Baidu remains one of China’s few major efforts at building a foundation A.I. model from scratch. Others are being led by Alibaba and Tencent, China’s tech giants, as well as a start-up linked to Tsinghua University.

尽管遭遇挫折，百度仍然是中国少数几家从零开始建立基础人工智能模型的大型公司之一。其他领先的还有中国科技巨头阿里巴巴和腾讯，以及一家与清华大学有关联的初创公司。

A Baidu spokesman declined to comment.

百度发言人拒绝置评。

U.S. restrictions on A.I. chip sales to China pose further challenges, since many such chips are needed when training generative A.I. models. Baidu and 01.AI, among others, have said they’ve stockpiled enough chips to sustain their operations in the near future.

美国限制向中国销售人工智能芯片带来了进一步的挑战，因为在训练生成式人工智能模型时需要许多这样的芯片。百度和01.AI等公司表示，他们已经储备了足够的芯片，短时间内运营不会有问题。

There are some bright spots for China with A.I., including in fields like computer vision and autonomous vehicles. Some Chinese entrepreneurs are also looking to leapfrog the United States with breakthroughs in other parts of generative A.I.

中国在人工智能方面也有一些亮点，包括计算机视觉和自动驾驶汽车等领域。一些中国企业家也希望在生成式人工智能的其他领域取得突破，从而超越美国。

Wang Changhu, the former head of ByteDance’s A.I. lab, founded a company called AIsphere in Beijing last year to spearhead what he saw as the next major frontier in the technology: video generation. In November, the start-up released PixVerse, an A.I.-powered generator that can create video from a text description.

字节跳动人工智能实验室的前负责人王长虎去年在北京创立了一家名为AIsphere的公司，致力于开拓他心目中人工智能技术的下一个重要前沿领域：视频生成。去年11月，这家初创公司发布了PixVerse，这是一款人工智能驱动的生成器，可以根据文字描述制作视频。

“We forged ahead, building our models from the ground up,” Mr. Wang said. “This gives us a significant edge as true pioneers in the realm of video generation.”

“我们勇往直前，从零开始构建模型，”王长虎说。“作为视频生成领域的真正先驱，这给了我们很大的优势。”

That edge may have lasted just a few months. Last week, OpenAI unveiled Sora, an A.I. tool that turns a simple text prompt into videos that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie. Sora instantly went viral.

这种优势可能只持续了几个月。上周，OpenAI发布了一款名为Sora的人工智能工具，可以将简单的文本指令转换成视频，看起来就像是好莱坞电影中的片段的一样。这种工具立刻在网上引起了热议。