The United States, by almost any measure, dominates the world of artificial intelligence. The most powerful A.I. systems are made in America. The United States has far more A.I. data centers than any other country. And a vast majority of the computer chips used to build A.I. were developed by American companies.

无论以何种标准衡量，美国都在人工智能领域占据主导地位。最强大的人工智能系统都是美国制造。美国拥有的人工智能数据中心数量远超其他任何国家。而且，用于构建人工智能的绝大多数计算机芯片都是由美国公司开发的。

Perception, however, is a different matter.

然而，人们的观感却是另一回事。

In recent weeks, China has appeared to erode that sizable lead. The competition came into sharper focus last week when a Chinese start-up released a system nearly as powerful as the leading American technologies but costing a lot less. It was the second time in about a month that a Chinese company managed that feat.

最近几周，中国似乎正在削弱这一巨大的领先优势。上周，一家中国初创公司发布了一个几乎与美国领先技术一样强大、但成本却低得多的系统，这场竞争由此变得更加引人瞩目。这已是中国公司在大约一个月内第二次取得这一成就。

In a speech on Friday, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, hailed Beijing as the champion of a new global A.I. order. “A.I. development should not be a solo performance by a single country but a symphony of international cooperation,” Mr. Xi said.

在上周五的讲话中，中国领导人习近平赞扬北京是全球人工智能新秩序的引领者。“人工智能发展不应该是某个国家的独奏，而应当是全球合作的交响，”习近平说。

As it has with other cutting-edge technologies, from consumer electronics to electric cars, China is demonstrating that it can produce something almost as good but at a far more affordable price. That strikes a nerve in Silicon Valley, where industry veterans know that when it comes to technology, good enough often beats best if it is a lot cheaper. That has been true since PCs replaced mainframes, and it could happen again with A.I.

正如在消费电子、电动汽车等其他尖端技术领域一样，中国正在证明它能够生产出质量相差无几、但价格却实惠得多的产品。这触动了硅谷的神经，那里的行业资深人士深知，在技术领域，如果价格低得多，“足够好”往往能击败“最好”。自从个人电脑取代大型机以来，这一直是真理，而在人工智能领域，这种情况可能会再次发生。

But worries about China’s increasing A.I. prowess appear to be less about what technologists in that country are doing right and more about what the United States could be doing wrong. American companies could be building their product the wrong way. They could be spending too much and charging too much for their products. The Trump administration could also be needlessly meddling in the A.I. market.

但是，对中国日益增强的人工智能实力的担忧，似乎更多不是源于中国的技术人员做对了什么，而是源于美国可能做错了什么。美国公司构建产品的方式可能出了问题；他们可能在产品上花费过多，且收费过高。特朗普政府也可能是在对人工智能市场进行不必要的干预。

“This is still the U.S.’s race to lose, but it is getting damn close,” said Rehaan Ahmad, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley start-up alphaXiv, who has been using the latest Chinese technologies for the past several weeks.

“美国依然掌握着这场竞赛的主动权，但双方的差距真的已经非常近了，”硅谷初创公司 alphaXiv的联合创始人雷汉·艾哈迈德说，他在过去几周里一直在使用最新的中国技术。

Last month, the A.I. start-up Anthropic shut down its two most powerful systems after the government unexpectedly demanded that the company bar access to foreign nationals, including its own employees. Anthropic’s close competitor, OpenAI, also said the administration had interfered with a recent release of its technology.

上个月，在政府出人意料地要求人工智能初创公司Anthropic禁止包括其自身员工在内的外国公民访问其技术后，该公司关闭了其两个最强大的系统。Anthropic的密切竞争对手OpenAI也表示，政府干预了该公司最近一次的技术发布。

Like some A.I. researchers, administration officials were worried that the technology could drive cyberattacks or maybe even help build bioweapons.

与一些人工智能研究人员一样，政府官员担心这项技术可能会助长网络攻击，甚至可能被用于制造生物武器。

The administration lifted its restrictions, but Anthropic and OpenAI still maintain strict control over who can use the technologies and who cannot. Executives at both companies have called on the government to regulate A.I. in some way.

尽管政府随后取消了限制，但Anthropic和OpenAI仍然严格控制着谁可以使用这些技术，谁不能使用。两家公司的高管都呼吁政府以某种方式对人工智能进行监管。

On Friday, Mr. Xi specifically mentioned the so-called open source method that the Chinese companies use to develop their technology. It was a remarkable moment, in which a world leader appeared to be taking a side in a decades-long tech industry debate.

周五，习近平特别提到了中国公司用来开发其技术的所谓“开源”方法。这是一个非同寻常的时刻，一位世界领导人似乎在长达数十年的科技行业争论中表明了立场。

On one side are people who think new technology should be tightly controlled, and on the other are people who think it should be freely shared and distributed — the open source approach that Mr. Xi championed. Without open source, it would be extraordinarily difficult for Chinese companies to catch up.

在这场争论中，一方认为新技术应该受到严格控制，另一方则认为新技术应该自由共享和分发——这正是习近平所倡导的开源方法。如果没有开源，中国公司想要赶超将极其困难。

“The most authoritarian government is producing the most egalitarian models, and what should be the most democratic government is breeding companies that are the most authoritarian,” said Rayan Krishnan, chief executive of Vals AI, a company that evaluates the performance of the latest A.I. technologies.

“最专制的政府正在打造最平等的模型，而本应最民主的政府却在孕育最专制的公司，”专门评估最新人工智能技术性能的Vals AI公司首席执行官拉扬·克里希南表示。

Companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and Google hope to recoup their aggressive spending by selling increasingly useful but often expensive technologies to businesses and consumers. China is offering similar technology free of charge. That means companies anywhere in the world — including in the United States — can operate this technology at much lower costs.

Anthropic、OpenAI和谷歌等公司希望通过向企业和消费者出售日益实用但往往极其昂贵的技术，来收回其巨额投入。而中国则在免费提供类似的技术。这意味着世界上任何地方的企业——包括美国的企业——都能以低得多的成本运行这项技术。

On Thursday, a Chinese start-up, Moonshot AI, released a new A.I. technology that is nearly as powerful as the leading American model, Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5. In line with other Chinese A.I. companies, Moonshot said it would soon open source the technology, called Kimi 3. The start-up also sells a version as an online service, just as American companies do.

周四，中国初创公司月之暗面发布了一项新的人工智能技术，其功能几乎与美国领先模型Anthropic的Claude Fable 5一样强大。与其他中国人工智能公司一样，月之暗面表示它将很快开源这项名为Kimi 3的技术。这家初创公司也像美国公司一样，将该技术的一个版本作为在线服务进行销售。

周五，中国推出的新人工智能模型Kimi 3引发了美国科技股的抛售潮。

A day later, the tech-focused Nasdaq fell 1.4 percent and the S&P 500 fell 1 percent, with Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Meta, the maker of Facebook and Instagram, dropping 2 to 4 percent. It was, in the minds of some tech experts, a silly overreaction.

一天后，以科技股为主的纳斯达克指数下跌了1.4%，标准普尔500指数下跌了1%，谷歌母公司Alphabet以及Facebook和Instagram的母公司Meta的股价下跌了2%至 4%。在一些科技专家看来，这是一种愚蠢的过度反应。

“Nothing fundamentally has changed,” said Perry Metzger, a software developer who has worked on A.I. for more than two decades. “The problem is that the bulk of investors have no idea what it is that any of these systems actually do, or how any of the companies make their money, or what any of the news means.”

“从根本上说，没有任何变化，”从事人工智能研究20多年的软件开发人员佩里·梅茨格表示。“问题在于，大多数投资者根本不知道这些系统实际上是做什么的，也不知道这些公司是如何盈利的，或者这些新闻到底意味着什么。”

The Kimi model is at the cutting edge of open source Chinese technologies that are nearly as powerful as top American systems. Last month, another Chinese start-up, Z.ai, released a model that start-ups and independent developers across Silicon Valley rapidly adopted.

Kimi模型处于中国开源技术的最前沿，其功能几乎与美国顶级系统一样强大。上个月，另一家中国初创公司智谱AI发布了一个模型，迅速被整个硅谷的初创公司和独立开发人员采用。

After its release, six of the 10 most popular A.I. systems on OpenRouter — a closely watched leaderboard of A.I. models — were Chinese technologies.

该模型发布后，在备受关注的人工智能模型排行榜OpenRouter上，最受欢迎的10个人工智能系统中有六个是中国技术。

In some key areas, the latest systems from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI still outperform Kimi and other Chinese models, according to benchmark tests run by Vals AI and other independent companies. But because the top Chinese models are generally open source, they cost considerably less to use.

根据Vals AI和其他独立公司运行的基准测试，在某些关键领域，Anthropic和OpenAI等公司的最新系统的性能仍然优于Kimi和其他中国模型。但由于顶尖的中国模型通常是开源的，其使用成本要低得多。

In early 2024, a third Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, first set off alarm bells among investors and tech executives with the release of a surprisingly effective open source system. Stocks took a similar tumble. Soon, companies like OpenAI accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of improperly harvesting data from their A.I. systems to accelerate the development of Chinese technologies.

2024年初，第三家中国初创公司深度求索发布了一个高效到出人意料的开源系统，首次引发了投资者和科技高管的警觉。当时股市也出现了类似的下跌。很快，OpenAI等公司指责DeepSeek和其他中国公司通过不当手段抓取其人工智能系统的数据，以加速中国技术的开发。

Last month, Anthropic sent a letter to two U.S. senators accusing the Chinese tech giant Alibaba of “brazenly” and “illicitly” trying to copy its technology through 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

上个月，Anthropic向两名美国参议员致函，指责中国科技巨头阿里巴巴试图通过2.4万个欺诈账户“明目张胆”且“非法地”复制其技术。

Using data from one system to train another — a process called distillation — is common in A.I. development, including in the United States. But the Anthropic and OpenAI terms of service forbid anyone to surreptitiously harvest data for distillation. Anthropic called on lawmakers and regulators to explore ways of curbing the practice.

使用一个系统的数据来训练另一个系统——这一过程被称为“蒸馏”——在人工智能开发中很常见，在美国也是如此。但Anthropic和OpenAI的服务条款禁止任何人暗中抓取数据进行蒸馏。Anthropic呼吁立法者和监管机构探索遏制这种做法的途径。

Some experts believe, however, that distillation will become less important as companies build systems designed to operate as “A.I. agents” — digital assistants that can use other software to perform tasks. Training agents requires far more than just distillation, these experts say.

然而，一些专家认为，随着各家公司构建旨在作为“AI智能体”运行的系统——也就是能够使用其他软件执行任务的数字助手——蒸馏技术的重要性将逐渐降低。这些专家表示，训练智能体需要的远不止是蒸馏。

Other experts have long argued that Chinese systems will always trail the top U.S. models because U.S. export controls limit the flow of the specialized computer chips needed to train A.I. technologies. But Moonshot, Z.ai and DeepSeek spend millions for access to chips in data centers outside China.

另一些专家长期以来一直认为，由于美国的出口管制限制了训练人工智能技术所需的专用计算机芯片的流通，中国系统将永远落后于美国顶尖模型。但月之暗面、智谱AI和深度求索花费成百上千万美元，以获取中国境外数据中心中的芯片。

Various Chinese companies have also started to build their own specialized chips, and A.I. start-ups like Z.ai say they are beginning to use these chips at least as a way of augmenting the chips from the United States that they have managed to acquire.

多家中国公司也已开始自主研发专用芯片，像智谱AI这样的人工智能初创公司表示，他们正在开始使用这些芯片，至少作为对已成功采购的美国芯片的一种补充。

Even as China sloughs off U.S. export controls and other restrictions, many U.S. executives, lawmakers and policymakers continue to call for regulations that tightly control the use of American technologies. But some experts believe that these regulations could ultimately push more people toward Chinese models because they can use these technologies however they want.

尽管中国正在摆脱美国的出口管制和其他限制，许多美国高管、立法者和政策制定者仍在继续呼吁出台法规，严格控制美国技术的使用。但一些专家认为，这些法规最终可能会将更多人推向中国模型，因为他们可以随心所欲地使用这些技术。

“It is really hard for U.S. companies to operate when they know that the Chinese models are getting more and more powerful,” Mr. Krishnan said. “Something like Kimi 3 is purely open source. There is no way to control how anyone uses it.”

“当美国公司知道中国模型变得越来越强大时，他们的运营就变得非常困难了，”克里希南说。他还说：“像Kimi 3这样的系统是纯开源的。根本无法控制任何人如何使用它。”