Western commentators have focussed on the role of open source as being free as in beer.
BBC reported on DeepSeek R1: ‘
“In January, it released its latest model, DeepSeek R1, which it said rivalled technology developed by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its capabilities, while costing far less to create.
Its popularity and potential rattled investors, wiping billions of dollars off the market value of chip giant Nvidia – and called into question whether American firms would dominate the booming artificial intelligence (AI) market, as many assumed they would.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yv5976z9po
But the major impact of Open Source is ‘free’ as in freedom. Western AI as a proprietary system would have technologically enslaved the whole world as much of the future will be built on AI. Privatised software cannot easily be changed or customised without permission. It is also subject to hidden ‘backdoors’. Part of the valuation of Western AI would be on the expectation that it would provide a private gate for the whole world.
Now a developer in Nigeria or Brazil is free to develop future platforms built on AI whereas before they would have been peons of American AI.
It is clear that this is a government policy once one sees the uniformity of adoption.
‘On March 16, Baidu released the latest version of its AI model, Ernie 4.5, as well as a new reasoning model, Ernie X1, making them free for individual users. Baidu also plans to make the Ernie 4.5 model series open-source from end-June. ‘
‘https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/24/china-open-source-deepseek-ai-spurs-innovation-and-adoption.html
Why would China promote open source? To overwhelm America and its AI, open source provides the best option. Open source brings the whole of the global south and much of the West on board as allies to compete against privatised American AI. Even Western enterprises will adopt open source AI to reduce costs and increase flexibility. If China had gone down the route of privatisation then America would launch a campaign against Chinese AI as unreliable and a security risk. But being open source means the entire code is available for inspection and review.
In the past US private companies like Microsoft fought against Open Source and then eventually Microsoft bought then developed a Linux distrubtion. That war was over. Open source software succeeded against the world’s most powerful private software company.
Correctly understood the opening up of China’s AI as open source is a strategic catastrophe for American AI companies.