China is quickly eroding America's lead in the global AI race
In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, users ranging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies such as startup DeepSeek and e-commerce giant Alibaba as alternatives to American offerings such as ChatGPT.
HSBC and Standard Chartered have begun testing DeepSeek's models internally, according to people familiar with the matter. Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, recently installed DeepSeek in its main data center.
Even major American cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google offer DeepSeek to customers, despite the White House banning use of the company's app on some government devices over data-security concerns.
OpenAI's ChatGPT remains the world's predominant AI consumer chatbot, with 910 million global downloads compared with DeepSeek's 125 million, figures from researcher Sensor Tower show. American AI is widely seen as the industry's gold standard, thanks to advantages in computing semiconductors, cutting-edge research and access to financial capital.
But as in many other industries, Chinese companies have started to snatch customers by offering performance that is nearly as good at vastly lower prices. A study of global competitiveness in critical technologies released in early June by researchers at Harvard University found China has advantages in two key building blocks of AI, data and human capital, that are helping it keep pace.
The competition, some industry insiders say, has set the world on the path toward a technological Cold War in which countries will have to decide to align with either American or Chinese AI systems.
'The No. 1 factor that will define whether the U.S. or China wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world," Microsoft President Brad Smith said at a recent Senate hearing. 'Whoever gets there first will be difficult to supplant."
China's AI companies have barreled forward despite barriers thrown in their path by the U.S. Concerned about China's pursuit of cutting-edge technology for surveillance or military purposes, Washington squeezed Chinese AI companies' access to American computer chips, know-how and financing, and is threatening to tighten more.
Beijing, in turn, is pouring money into building an AI supply chain with as little reliance on the U.S. as possible.
Papers published in military journals show the People's Liberation Army, like the U.S. military, is actively exploring how to exploit advances in AI for strategic advantage, though it is hard to determine how far those efforts have gone. U.S. lawmakers recently introduced a bipartisan bill that would ban federal agencies from using AI developed in China.
As the competing systems become more closed off to each other, industry insiders say AI models will have freer rein to lock users inside bubbles of misinformation and propaganda. Further down the line, a breakdown in U.S.-China cooperation on safety and security could cripple the world's capacity to fight future military and societal threats from unrestrained AI.
The fracturing of global AI is already costing Western makers of computer chips and other hardware billions in lost sales. When the Trump administration halted the sale of Nvidia's H20 AI chip—a processor stripped down to meet U.S. export-control requirements for China—researcher Jefferies forecast the move would cost Nvidia $10 billion in lost revenue.
Adoption of Chinese models globally could also mean lost market share and earnings for AI-related U.S. firms such as Google and Meta.
This year, privately held OpenAI has been making a strong push to expand overseas, opening offices in Europe and Asia.
In a public post on Substack on June 25, OpenAI wrote that Zhipu AI, a Chinese AI upstart, was making inroads helping Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and African nations build out their AI infrastructure.
OpenAI said the Chinese startup's goal was to 'lock Chinese systems and standards into emerging markets before U.S. or European rivals can," and claimed its leadership frequently engaged with Chinese Communist Party officials. OpenAI has a similar business line selling AI solutions to governments around the world.
'We want to make sure democratic AI wins over authoritarian AI," OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said in May.
Zhipu didn't respond to a request for comment.
While American AI companies give priority to the pursuit of major breakthroughs in a race to build artificial superintelligence, China's AI industry is focused far more on using AI to build practical applications—an emphasis that could help it win new users quickly.
Leading Chinese AI companies—which include Tencent and Baidu—further benefit from releasing their AI models open-source, meaning users are free to tweak them for their own purposes. That encourages developers and companies globally to adopt them.
Analysts say it could also pressure U.S. rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic to justify keeping their models private and the premiums they charge for their service. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
On Latenode, a Cyprus-based platform that helps global businesses build custom AI tools for tasks including creating social-media and marketing content, as many as one in five users globally now opt for DeepSeek's model, according to co-founder Oleg Zankov.
'DeepSeek is overall the same quality but 17 times cheaper," Zankov said, which makes it particularly appealing for clients in places such as Chile and Brazil, where money and computing power aren't as plentiful.
Developers have created more than 100,000 derivative models based on Alibaba's flagship open-source AI model, Qwen, Alibaba said.
Abeja, a Tokyo-based AI startup, chose Qwen over similar products from Google and Meta last fall when asked to build a series of customized models for Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
At the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, research managers chose DeepSeek for a pilot grant-writing project because it is open-source and can be used offline, keeping the university's data safe, according to Taariq Surtee, the university's head of e-research.
A few years ago, the American and Chinese AI sectors were tightly intertwined.
In 2018, U.S. investors participated in deals covering around 30% of the $21.9 billion in funding for the Chinese AI sector, according to PitchBook. Elite Chinese students flooded into American universities and Silicon Valley companies.
Today, U.S. venture-capital investment in Chinese AI companies has largely dried up. Chinese nationals are finding it harder to study and work in the U.S.
The less dominant American AI companies are, the less power the U.S. will have to set global standards for how the technology should be used, industry analysts say. That opens the door for Beijing to use Chinese models as a Trojan horse for disseminating information that reflects its preferred view of the world, some warn.
While the open-source version of DeepSeek deployed by some institutions and researchers isn't censored, the app's consumer version produces censored answers on topics considered sensitive by the Communist Party, such as ethnic assimilation campaigns in Xinjiang and Tibet.
DeepSeek didn't respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. also risks losing insight into China's ambitions and AI innovations, according to Ritwik Gupta, AI policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
'If they are dependent on the global ecosystem, then we can govern it," said Gupta. 'If not, China is going to do what it is going to do, and we won't have visibility."
Write to Josh Chin at Josh.Chin@wsj.com, Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com and Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com
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Time of India
32 minutes ago
- Time of India
An Israeli startup says its new technology will save the planet, scientists have doubts
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills The startup Gigablue announced with fanfare this year that it reached a historic milestone: selling 200,000 carbon credits to fund what it describes as a groundbreaking technology in the fight against climate three years ago by a group of entrepreneurs in Israel, the company says it has designed particles that when released in the ocean will trcarbon at the bottom of the sea. By "harnessing the power of nature," Gigablue says, its work will do nothing less than save the outside scientists frustrated by the lack of information released by the company say serious questions remain about whether Gigablue's technology works as the company describes. Their questions showcase tensions in an industry built on little regulation and big promises - and a tantalizing chance to Pallas, an event organizer based in Italy, struck a deal with Gigablue last year. He said he trusts the company does what it has promised him - ensuring the transportation, meals, and electricity of a recent 1,000-person event will be offset by particles in the service is like "an extra trash can" where Pallas can discard his unwanted emissions, he said."Same way I use my trash can - I don't follow where the truck that comes and picks up my trash brings it to," he said. "I'll take their word for it."'Hundreds of thousands of carbon credits' Gigablue has a grand vision for the future of carbon removal. It was originally named "Gigaton" after the one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide most scientists say will be necessary to remove from the atmosphere each year to slow global company began trials in the South Pacific Ocean last year, and says it will work with country authorities to create a "sequestration field" - a dedicated part of the ocean where "pulses" of particles will be released on a seasonal says its solution is affordable, too - priced to attract investors."Every time we go to the ocean, we generate hundreds of thousands of carbon credits, and this is what we're going to do continuously over the upcoming years and towards the future, in greater and greater quantities," co-founder Ori Shaashua credits, which have grown in popularity over the last decade, are tokens that symbolize the removal of one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On paper, companies that buy credits achieve a smaller carbon footprint without needing to reduce their own emissions - for instance, by paying another vendor to plant trees or capture carbon dioxide from the a few countries have required local industries to purchase carbon credits. Most companies that buy them, including Microsoft and Google, do so credits have helped fund a band of startups like Gigablue that are eager to tackle the climate crisis, but they are also unevenly regulated, scientifically complex, and have in some cases been linked to 200,000 credits are pledged to SkiesFifty, a newly formed company investing in greener practices for the aviation industry. It's the largest sale to date for a climate startup operating in the ocean, according to the tracking site making up more than half of all ocean-based carbon credits sold last it could beckon a rapid acceleration of the company's work. Gigablue hopes to reach a goal this year of capturing 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of particles it deploys, Shaashua said. At that rate, Gigablue would disperse at least 20,000 tons of particles in the wouldn't reveal what it earned in the sale, and SkiesFifty's team declined to be interviewed for this story. Most credits are sold for a few hundred dollars each - but a chart on Gigablue's website suggests its prices are lower than almost any other form of carbon capture on the market.A mission to save the world The startup is the brainchild of four entrepreneurs hailing from the tech industry. According to their LinkedIn profiles, Gigablue's CEO previously worked for an online grocery startup, while its COO was vice president of SeeTree, a company that raised $60 million to provide farmers with information on their who often serves as the face of Gigablue, said he specializes in using artificial intelligence to pursue positive outcomes in the world. He co-founded a data mining company that tracked exposure risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and led an auto startup that brokered data on car mileage and traffic patterns."Three years ago, I decided to take the same formula, so to say, to climate," Shaashua his guidance, he said, Gigablue created an AI-driven "digital twin" of the ocean based on dozens of metrics to determine where to release the technology officer Sapir Markus-Alford earned a bachelor's degree in earth and environmental sciences from Israel's Ben-Gurion University in 2021, shortly before founding said she began her studies and eventual path to Gigablue after seeing bleached coral reefs and other impacts of warming waters on a series of diving trips around the world."I understood that the best thing we could do for the ocean is to be able to remove CO2," Markus-Alford said.A spokesperson for Gigablue did not answer whether the other co-founders have graduate degrees in oceanography or environmental science, but said the company's broader team holds a total of 46 Ph.D.s with expertise in biology, chemistry, oceanography, and environmental science. Markus-Alford said that figure includes outside experts and academics and "everyone that supports us."The company's staffing has expanded from Israel to hubs in New York and New Zealand , Shaashua social media posts advertising open jobs, Gigablue employees encouraged applicants to "Join Our Mission to Save the World!"Trapping carbon at the bottom of the ocean The particles Gigablue has patented are meant to capture carbon in the ocean by floating for a number of days and growing tiny algae , before sinking rapidly to the ocean floor."We are an elevator for carbon," Shaashua said. "We are exporting the carbon from the top to the bottom."Algae - sometimes referred to as phytoplankton - has long been attractive to climate scientists because it absorbs carbon dioxide from the surrounding water as it grows. If the algae sinks to the deep sea or ocean floor, Gigablue expects the carbon to be trapped there for hundreds to thousands of ultimate goal is to lower carbon dioxide levels so drastically that the ocean rebalances with the atmosphere by soaking up more CO2 from the air. It's a feat that would help slow climate change, but one that is still under active study by climate founders have said the company's work is inspired by nature and "very, very environmentally safe." The company's particles and sinking methods simply recreate what nature has been doing "since forever," Shaashua ran its first trial sinking particles in the Mediterranean in March last on two voyages to the South Pacific, the company released 60 cubic meters - about two shipping containers - of particles off the coast of New kept a mystery While Gigablue has made several commercial deals, it has not yet revealed what its particles are made of. Partly this is because the company says it will build different particles tailored to different seasons and areas of the ocean."It's proprietary," Markus-Alford provide a window into the possible ingredients. According to information on the permit, Gigablue's first New Zealand trial last year involved releasing particles of pure vermiculite, a porous clay often used in potting the second New Zealand trial, the company released particles made of vermiculite, ground rock, a plant-based wax, as well as manganese and iron.A patent published last year hints the particles could also be made of scores of other materials, including cotton, rice husks or jute, as well as synthetic ingredients like polyester fibers or lint. The particles contain a range of possible binding agents, and up to 18 different chemicals and metals, from iron to nickel to specifying future designs, Markus-Alford said Gigablue's particles meet certain requirements: "All the materials we use are materials that are natural, nontoxic, nonhazardous, and can be found in the ocean," she said. She wouldn't comment on the possible use of cotton or rice, but said the particles won't include any kind of asked about vermiculite, which is typically mined on land and heated to expand, Markus-Alford said rivers and erosion transport most materials including vermiculite to the ocean. "Almost everything, basically, that exists on land can be found in the ocean," she company said it had commissioned an environmental institute to verify that the particles are safe for thousands of organisms, including mussels and oysters. Any materials in future particles, Gigablue said, will be approved by local has said the particles are so benign that they have zero impact on the ocean."We are not changing the water chemistry or the water biology," Shaashua Buesseler , a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has spent decades studying the biological carbon cycle of the ocean, says that while he's intrigued by Gigablue's proposal, the idea that the particles don't alter the ocean is "almost inconceivable.""There has to be a relationship between what they're putting in the ocean and the carbon dioxide that's dissolved in seawater for this to, quote, work," Buesseler co-leads a nonprofit group of scientists hoping to tap the power of algae in the ocean to capture carbon. The group organizes regular forums on the subject, and Gigablue presented in April."I left with more questions than answers," Buesseler raise questions Several scientists not affiliated with Gigablue interviewed by The Associated Press said they were interested in how a company with so little public information about its technology could secure a deal for 200,000 carbon success of the company's method, they said, will depend on how much algae grows on the particles, and the amount that sinks to the deep ocean. So far, Gigablue has not released any studies demonstrating those Kiorboe, a professor of ocean ecology at the Technical University of Denmark, and Philip Boyd, an oceanographer at the University of Tasmania who studies the role of algae in the Earth's carbon cycle, said they were doubtful algae would get enough sunlight to grow inside the more likely the particles would attract hungry bacteria, Kiorboe said."Typical phytoplankton do not grow on surfaces, and they do not colonize particles," Kiorboe said. "To most phytoplankton ecologists, this would just be, I think, absurd."The rates at which Gigablue says its particles sink - up to a hundred meters (yards) per hour - might shear off algae from the particles in the quick descent, Boyd likely that some particles would also be eaten by fish - limiting the carbon capture, and raising the question of how the particles could impact marine is eager to see field results showing algae growth, and wants to see proof that Gigablue's particles cause the ocean to absorb more CO2 from the air."These are incredibly challenging issues that I don't think, certainly for the biological part, I don't think anyone on the planet has got solutions for them," he Kerry, a senior marine and climate scientist for the conservation group OceanCare and senior research fellow at Australia's James Cook University, has closely followed Gigablue's work."What we've got is a situation of a company, a startup, upfront selling large quantities of credits for a technology that is unproven," he a statement, Gigablue said that bacteria does consume the particles but the effect is minimal, and its measurements will account for any loss of algae or particles as they company noted that a major science institute in New Zealand has given Gigablue its stamp of approval. Gigablue hired the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, a government-owned company, to review several drafts of its a recent letter posted to Gigablue's website, the institute's chief ocean scientist said his staff had confidence the company's work is "scientifically sound" and the proposed measurements for carbon sequestration were Gigablue's methods are deemed successful, for now, will be determined not by regulators - but by another private company.A new market is one of several companies known as registries that serve the carbon credit the lack of regulation and the potential for climate startups to overstate their impact, registries aim to verify how much carbon was really Finnish has verified more than a million carbon credits since its founding seven years ago. But most of those credits originated in land-based climate projects. Only recently has it aimed to set standards for the part, that's because marine carbon credits are some of the newest to be traded. Dozens of ocean startups have entered the industry, with credit sales catapulting from 2,000 in 2021 to more than 340,000, including Gigablue's deal, last the ocean remains a hostile and expensive place in which to operate a business or monitor research. Some ocean startups have sold credits only to fold before they could complete their work. Running Tide, a Maine-based startup aimed at removing carbon from the atmosphere by sinking wood chips and seaweed, abruptly shuttered last year despite the backing of $50 million from investors, leaving sales of about 7,000 carbon credits June, published a draft methodology that will be used to verify Gigablue's work, which it designed in consultation with Gigablue. Once finalized, Gigablue will pay the registry for each metric ton of carbon dioxide that it claims to Tikkanen, head of standards at said that although this methodology was designed with Gigablue, her team expects other startups to adopt the same approach."We hope that there will be many who can do it and that it stimulates the market," she road ahead It remains to be seen whether New Zealand officials will grant permission for the expanded "sequestration field" that Gigablue has proposed creating, or if the company will look to other Zealand's environmental authority has so far treated Gigablue's work as research - a designation that requires no formal review process or consultations with the public. The agency said in a statement that it could not comment on how it would handle a future commercial application from like many climate startups, Gigablue was involved in selling carbon credits during its research expeditions - not only inking a major deal, but smaller agreements, the Italian businessman, said he ordered 22 carbon credits from Gigablue last year to offset the emissions associated with his event in November. He said Gigablue gave them to him for free - but says he will pay for more in the sought out carbon credits because he sees the signs of climate change all around him, he says, and expects more requirements in Italy for businesses to decarbonize in coming years. He chose Gigablue because they are one of the largest suppliers: "They've got quantity," he authorities view Gigablue's growing commercial activity could matter in the context of an international treaty that has banned certain climate operations in the than a decade ago, dozens of countries including New Zealand agreed they should not allow any commercial climate endeavor that involves releasing iron in the ocean, a technique known as "iron fertilization." Only research, they said, with no prospect of economic gain should be is considered a key ingredient for spurring algae growth and was embedded in the particles that Gigablue dispersed in October in the Pacific Ocean. Several scientific papers have raised concerns that spurring iron-fueled algae blooms on a large scale would deplete important nutrients in the ocean and harm startup denies any link to iron dumping on the basis that its particles don't release iron directly into the water and don't create an uncontrolled algae bloom."We are not fertilizing the ocean," Markus-Alford said."In fact, we looked at iron fertilization as an inspiration of something to avoid," Shaashua the draft methodology that will use to verify Gigablue's work notes many of the same concerns that have been raised about iron fertilization, including disruptions to the marine food scientists who spoke with AP see a clear link between Gigablue's work and the controversial practice. "If they're using iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth," said Kerry, the OceanCare scientist, "then it is iron fertilization."For now, scientific concerns don't seem to have troubled Gigablue's buyers. The company has already planned its next research expedition in New Zealand and hopes to release more particles this fall."They mean well, and so do I," said Pallas, of his support for Gigablue. "Sooner or later, I'll catch a plane, go to New Zealand, and grab a boat to see what they've done."
Hindustan Times
36 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Sony's Helldivers 2 coming to Xbox: Release date, time and all you need to know
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Time of India
37 minutes ago
- Time of India
Microsoft to cut about 4% of jobs amid hefty AI bets
Microsoft will lay off nearly 4% of its workforce, the company said on Wednesday, in the latest job cuts as the tech giant looks to rein in costs amid hefty investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company, which had about 228,000 employees worldwide as of June 2024, had announced layoffs in May, affecting around 6,000 workers. It was planning to cut thousands of jobs, particularly in sales, Bloomberg News reported last month. The Windows maker had pledged $80 billion in capital spending for its fiscal year 2025. However, the soaring cost of scaling its AI infrastructure has weighed on its margins, with its June quarter cloud margin expected to shrink from last year. Microsoft said on Wednesday it planned to reduce organizational layers with fewer managers and streamline its products, procedures and roles. The Seattle Times first reported on the layoffs earlier on Wednesday. Separately, Bloomberg News reported Microsoft's Barcelona-based King division, which makes the Candy Crush video game, is cutting 10% of its staff, or about 200 jobs. Big Tech peers, which are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, have also announced job cuts. Facebook parent Meta earlier this year said it would trim about 5% of its "lowest performers", while Alphabet's Google has also laid off hundreds of employees in the past year. Amazon has also cut jobs across its business segments, most recently in its books division. The company had earlier laid off employees in its devices and services unit, and communications staff.
