《经济学人》劝华盛顿：让中国抄美国AI

Two American AI companies are asking the government for help.

They say Chinese companies have been copying their models.

One even wants the government to impose fines.

OpenAI is one of them.

The other is also very big.

Copying models has a name: distillation.

The method is to take a large model's answers to teach a small model.

These two companies have hundreds of billions of dollars in total.

Both companies forbid others from doing this.

There is a bill in the US to punish foreign companies.

A top US official in charge of money said China is stealing American AI.

He said the US can punish China.

In September, the US said six Chinese companies copied American products.

China said these claims are unfounded.

OpenAI said someone tried to steal its thought process.

These people are connected to a Chinese company.

By July, OpenAI had stopped this.

Many people came to try, about 16,000 requests.

These requests came from more than 4,000 users.

Another big American company said a big Chinese company was the largest that time.

Authors sued it, saying it used their books.

It paid 1.5 billion dollars to settle the matter.

A British newspaper wrote an article.

The article said the US government should not ban distillation.

Experts say China is only three to six months behind the US.

The article said if China is allowed to copy, China will always use American answers.

If not allowed to copy, China will still only be a few months behind.

The article said copying does not guarantee surpassing.

In the past, the Soviet Union used American blueprints to make chips.

But in the end it still did not catch up.

Always copying may mean always being second.