China's AI push is about spreading economic gains, not enriching tech giants, a finance CEO says

"Open source - that might be the clearest signal of how China wants artificial intelligence to reshape its economy. Hisham Alrayes, the group CEO of Bahrain-based GFH Financial Group, said China is prioritizing open models and broad deployment to spread AI's gains across the economy, instead of funneling them to a few tech giants. Speaking at a Davos panel on China's "AI+ Economy" strategy on Wednesday, Alrayes said the country's approach reflects a fundamentally different economic philosophy."

""You look at the open structure of the China AI philosophy - then you have the non-open structure," Alrayes said. "That signals that the benefit they want to see is to trickle down into the economy, into the companies." Open source as economic strategy China's most prominent AI breakout, DeepSeek, reflects that philosophy. It mostly uses open-source models that have drawn global attention, in contrast to many large US language models that remain closed and proprietary, reaping the benefits of tightly controlled commercial ecosystems."

"Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, has said that a key reason behind DeepSeek's success is its open-source model, which, he said, can outperform proprietary models in terms of efficiency and innovation by building on shared research. Meanwhile, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that China's open-source AI models could gain an edge globally because they're free, making them more attractive than costly proprietary US systems for governments and countries that can't afford closed models."

China is pursuing an open-source AI strategy to extend AI-driven economic gains beyond major tech companies. Open models and wide deployment are intended to enable affordability and scale, allowing companies across the economy to access AI capabilities. DeepSeek exemplifies this approach by relying on open-source models, drawing global attention and encouraging shared research. Experts note that open models can outperform proprietary ones in efficiency and innovation by building on communal advances. Open-source offerings may also gain international traction because they are free or lower-cost, appealing to governments and lower-income countries.

Read at Business Insider