China weighs open-weight AI’s security risks against national tech innovation strategy: researchers

China is facing a delicate regulatory balancing act as it weighs the security risks of open-weight AI models against an innovation strategy that has been crucial to its race for technological supremacy with the United States, researchers said. Traditionally, open-weight models – which allow anyone to download code for free and run it on local hardware – have lagged months behind proprietary frontier models. But recent releases from Chinese labs have significantly narrowed that gap. Zhipu AI’s...