From Business Insider, November 11:
- Eric Schmidt warned that most countries may adopt Chinese open-source AI models.
- It comes down to the cost: open-source models are free.
- Tech execs are urging nations to build sovereign AI systems to avoid dependency on other countries.
Google's former CEO said he worries that most countries could end up using Chinese AI models because of the cost.
"This produces a bizarre outcome where the biggest models in the United States are closed source and the biggest models in China are open-source," Eric Schmidt said in an episode of the "Moonshots" podcast released on Tuesday. "The geopolitical issue there, of course, is that open source is free and the closed source models are not free."
Open-source AI models allow for the free and open sharing of software to anyone, for any purpose.
"So the vast majority of governments and countries who don't have the kind of money that the West does will end up standardizing on Chinese models not because they're better, but because they're free," Schmidt said.
Those who support open source say it allows technology to develop rapidly and democratically, as anyone can modify and redistribute the code. On the other hand, advocates for closed-source models argue that they're more secure because the code is kept private.
This year's popularity of Chinese models like DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen3 has raised concerns about data privacy, national security, and America's competitive advantage.
Schmidt was Google's CEO from 2001 to 2015 and led the company through its 2004 initial public offering. He is now a founding partner at venture capital firm Innovation Endeavours and runs an aviation startup called Relativity Space. He has a net worth of nearly $50 billion, per Bloomberg.
"Sovereign AI," which refers to a country's control and governance of AI technologies, data, and infrastructure, has been gaining attention in tech and political circles....
....MUCH MORE
Free does have its attractions.
