Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt feels US is lagging in the AI race, while China has THESE advantages | 5 points – Crypto News

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt feels that despite huge valuations and funding the United States is lagging behind China in the artificial intelligence (AI) tech race. Speaking at the All-In Summit on September 25, Schmidt shared his views on how China has out raced the US in AI, where American companies need to shift their focus, and what possible measures the west can take to catch up.

Schmidt noted that while US tech companies working in the AI field are largely pursuing artificial general intelligence or AGI, the Chinese are more focused on AI applications. He also noted that the overwhelming use of Open Source and Open Code projects from the Chinese means that their alternatives are more easily accessible and likely to be more widely adopted.

Schmidt also acknowledged that while Chinese companies in the AI space may not have $100 billion valuations, they have not been as hard hit by US imposing bans on chips and semiconductors, and have their own technologies matching American capabilities.

Eric Schmidt: US not clear leader against China in AI race — 5 Points

On US and China in the AI race

Responding to a question on how the US can compete with China on AI, Schmidt noted, “I had thought that China and the US were competing at the peer level in AI; and that the good work done to restrict chips, were slowing them down. (But), they’re really doing something more different than I thought.”

He noted that China is “not pursuing crazy AGI strategies”, as they don not have “the depth of capital markets” and cannot “raise $100 million dollars on a wing and a prayer”.

“The result is, they’re very focused on taking AI and applying it to everything. And the concern I have, is that while we’re pursuing AGI, we better also be competing with the Chinese in day-to-day stuff,” he said.

Chinese making strides in practical applications

Schmidt added that the Chinese AI companies are focused on “day-to-day” stuff and combined with their “incredible” work ethics, this strategy can win.

“They’re very focused on taking AI and applying it to everything, (such as) consumer apps, robots and so on. I saw all the Shanghai robotics companies and these guys are attempting to do in robots what they’ve successfully done with electric vehicles,” he said.

Adding, “Their work ethics are incredible. They’re well funded. It’s not the crazy valuations that we have in America, but they can win across that.”

Open Source makes Chinese AI more accessible to larger audiences

The tech leader noted that the Chinese also have in lead in wide scale adoption due to the use of open source and open weights models, calling it a “major geopolitical issue”.

“Open Source means open code. Open weights means to open training data. (And) China is competing with open weights and open training data and the US is largely and majority focused on closed weights and closed data. That means that the majority of the world, think of it, as the Belt and Road initiative are going to use Chinese models and not American models,” he warned.

On US tech companies beginning work in open source

Schmidt also acknowledged that Chinese companies have “major achievements” when it comes to the technical aspects. He noted that despite moves towards more open source, DeepSeek shook the AI industry.

“The DeepSeek people did such a good job, right? If you look at the reasoning model in DeepSeek and in particular their ability to do reinforcement, learning forward and back, this is a major achievement and it appears that they’re doing it with less numeric precision than the American models,” Schmidt pointed out.

He noted that, while the American models are typically using 16-bit Precision for their training, the Chinese are pushing eight and four bit precision.

What steps can American companies take?

When asked if there were steps that American companies need to undertake in order to compete with China, Schmidt noted that the initiative has already begun, stating, “A number of the large companies have said that they want to be leaders in open source. Sam Altman indicated that the smallest version of the O3 model would be released — I believe, (it will be) open weights. He told me that this model is much smaller, much easier to train, and will or can fit on your phone.”

“So one path is to say that we’ll have these super computers doing AGI, which will always be incredibly expensive and so forth. But we also have to watch to make sure that the proliferation of these models for handheld devices is under American control. Whether it’s OpenAI or Meta, or (Google’s) Gemini or what have you,” he ended.