Open or closed AI? A hard lesson for the rest of the world either way
The flare-up over China’s open-weight models reveals a bipolar AI world – and why smaller states should refuse to pick a side early.
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Recent indications by the US and China that they would not think twice about shutting off frontier models for the rest of the world disabuse countries of the notion that safety lies in picking a side, the writer says.
PHOTO: AFP
Intellectually, a person from a tech-forward society like Singapore should be able to take either side of the ongoing debate on open-weight versus closed-weight large language models and defend it with conviction.
Simplified – and surely artificial intelligence wonks will say crudely so – the debate is aligned across the two superpowers, the United States and China.
