I think that's an overgeneralization. We've seen all the American models be closed and proprietary from the start. Meanwhile the non-American (especially the Chinese ones) have been open since the start. In fact they often go the opposite direction. Many Chinese models started off proprietary and then were later opened up (like many of the larger Qwen models)
The more accurate version is only Chinese companies (plus Facebook briefly) really open source their frontier models. The rest are non frontier. They are either older or specialized for something.
It's all openwashing, all of the ones you listed at somepoint have expressed how important and valuable open weights and locally usable models are. Every single one of them has then increasingly focused and pushed closed, proprietary or cloud usable only options since saying/doing that.
I'm annoyed at myself, because I thought/hoped/praised chinese AI when they were opening up as Llama was closing, but Qwen looks to be doing the same playbook here as Llama/Meta, Gemma/Google and OpenAI/gpt-oss.
> We've seen all the American models be closed and proprietary from the start.
Most*.
OpenAI, contrary to popular belief, actually used to believe in open research and (more or less) open models. GPT1 and GPT2 both were model+code releases (although GPT2 was a "staged" release), GPT3 ended up API-only.
Also the Chinese models aren't following a typical American SaaS playbook which relies on free/cheap proprietary software for early growth. They are not just publishing their weights but also their code and often even publishing papers in Open Access journals to explicitly highlight what methods and advancements were made to accomplish their results
Well, Musk v OpenAI kicks off in one week from now with the objective of forcing them back to their roots. A jury will be deciding whether a nonprofit accepting $50m - $100m of donations and then discarding their mission for an IPO is OK or not. Should be interesting.
If the question is why Chinese models are contributing to open source and sharing of information, I don’t pretend to know the rationale but I think it’s because it’s an economic war.
I think the Chinese models have to be more open to increase trust as everyone is worried they are feeding their very essence/soul into a Chinese copying machine.
Also China wants there to be viable competitors so that US can’t just dominate a potentially very important field. It’s a challenge to a unipolar USA dominated world.
Also it helps to spur Chinese companies in the all important microchip industry which is controlled by a very small number of companies at various steps in the supply chain.
I wonder too if it allows them to hold an ace in their hand as well in terms of threat/power for negotiations. As in, they can cause the whole house of cards to crumble, an economic nuclear weapon so to speak.
Finally, there is a certain amount of prestige involved too. China can compete or even win at a very complicated game. They use it to increase national pride and to project their advancing power status to other nations.
Anyways, just my thoughts. Interested in others thoughts.
