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China Is Closing the A.I. Gap With the United States
中国人工智能正在缩小与美国的差距
At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this month, start-up founder Qu Dongqi showed off a video he had recently posted online.
在本月于上海举行的世界人工智能大会上，初创公司创始人曲东奇展示了一段他最近发布在网上的视频。
It displayed an old photograph of a woman with two toddlers.
视频展示了一张旧照片，照片上是一位妇女和两个蹒跚学步的孩子。
Then the photo sprang to life as the woman lifted the toddlers up in her arms and they laughed with surprise.
然后照片动了起来，妇女把两个孩子抱起来，他们惊讶地笑了。
The video was created by A.I. technology from the Chinese internet company Kuaishou.
该视频是用中国互联网公司快手的人工智能技术创作的。
The technology was reminiscent of a video generator, called Sora, that the American start-up OpenAI unveiled this year.
这项技术让人想起了一个名为Sora的视频生成器，Sora是美国初创公司OpenAI于今年推出的。
But unlike Sora, it was available to the general public.
但与Sora不同的是，这项技术可供公众使用。
“My American friends still can’t use Sora,” Mr. Qu said. “But we already have better solutions here.”
“我的美国朋友们仍然无法使用Sora，”曲先生说，“但是我们这里已经有更好的解决方案了。”
While the United States has had a head start on A.I. development, China is catching up.
虽然美国在AI开发方面领先一步，但中国正在迎头赶上。
In recent weeks, several Chinese companies have unveiled A.I. technologies that rival the leading American systems.
最近几周，好几家中国公司已经推出了可与美国先进系统相媲美的AI技术。
And these technologies are already in the hands of consumers, businesses and independent software developers across the globe.
并且这些技术已经可以让全球消费者、企业和独立软件开发商上手使用。
While many American companies are worried that A.I. technologies could accelerate the spread of disinformation or cause other serious harm, Chinese companies are more willing to release their technologies to consumers or even share the underlying software code with other businesses and software developers.
许多美国公司担心AI技术可能会加速虚假信息的传播或造成其他严重危害，而中国公司更愿意向消费者发布其技术，甚至与其他企业和软件开发人员共享底层软件代码。
This kind of sharing of computer code, called open source, allows others to more quickly build and distribute their own products using the same technologies.
这种共享的计算机代码被称为开源代码，能让其他人使用相同的技术更快速地构建和扩散他们自己的产品。
Open source has been a cornerstone of the development of computer software, the internet and, now, artificial intelligence.
开源一直是计算机软件、互联网以及现在的AI开发的基石。
The idea is that technology advances faster when its computer code is freely available for anyone to examine, use and improve upon.
开源背后的理念是，当计算机代码可以自由地供任何人检查、使用和改进时，技术进步会更快。
When OpenAI kicked off the A.I. boom in late 2022 with the release of the online chatbot ChatGPT, China struggled to compete with technologies emerging from American companies like OpenAI and Google.
当OpenAI在2022年底发布了在线聊天机器人ChatGPT，从而开启了AI技术热潮时，当时中国还难以与OpenAI、谷歌等美国公司的新兴技术竞争。
But China’s progress is now accelerating.
但是中国现在的AI进展正在加速。
Kuaishou released its video generator, Kling, in China more than a month ago and to users worldwide on Wednesday.
快手一个多月前在中国发布了视频生成器可灵，并于周三向全球用户发布。
Just before Kling’s arrival, 01.AI, a start-up co-founded by Kai-Fu Lee, an investor and technologist who helped build Chinese offices for both Google and Microsoft, released chatbot technology that scored nearly as well as the leading American technologies on common benchmark tests that rate the performance of the world’s chatbots.
就在可灵出现之前，一家由李开复（投资者和技术专家，曾帮助谷歌和微软在中国建立业务）共同创立的初创公司零一万物发布了聊天机器人技术，在评估全世界聊天机器人性能的常见基准测试中，该技术得分几乎与美国领先技术相当。
New technology from the Chinese tech giant Alibaba has also leaped to the top of a leaderboard that rates open-source A.I. systems.
中国科技巨头阿里巴巴的新技术也跃居开源AI系统测评排行榜榜首。
“We have disproved the commonplace belief that China doesn’t have the talent or the technology to compete with the U.S.,” Dr. Lee said.
“我们已经证明了中国没有可与美国竞争的人才或技术这一常见观点是错误的，”李开复博士说，
“That belief is simply wrong.”
“那种观点完全是错误的。”
In interviews, a dozen technologists and researchers at Chinese tech companies said open-source technologies were a key reason that China’s A.I. development has advanced so quickly.
在采访中，中国各大科技公司的十几位技术专家和研究人员表示，开源技术是中国AI发展如此迅速的一个关键原因。
