When the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI in July released Kimi K3, an artificial intelligence model that rivaled some of the best systems made by American companies, it was free for anyone to download.
By making advanced A.I. models easily available, Chinese companies have turned open access into one of China’s most powerful advantages in its rivalry with the United States to shape the future of the technology.
Now Beijing is moving to tighten its grip on the global spread of the country’s top-tier A.I., proposing rules that could give the government new power to track, and potentially limit, where the systems go.
At the same time, the government sought to reassure users that the move would not stifle access to Chinese A.I., saying the vast majority of the technology would still be freely exported.
The draft rules reflect Beijing’s effort to balance two competing goals: regulate the spread of its frontier A.I. systems for strategic and security reasons while still encouraging global users to adopt Chinese software.
“It is almost like you have two voices speaking at the same time,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution focusing on Chinese technology and industrial policy. “One saying, ‘We want extra control of these sensitive technologies so that they can’t hurt China’ and another voice saying, ‘We want to develop the best A.I. technology and we want to share it with the rest of the world.’”