Bill Gates says he is very impressed with China's AI growth

Bill Gates is very impressed with China's AI growth

Bill Gates recently praised the rapid progress of China's artificial intelligence industry at a time when the US government has been warning American companies about China's growing strength in AI.

“Depending on how you measure it, both China and the United States each have four or more institutions whose models are capable of maintaining state-of-the-art levels. The gap between the top-scoring model and the other seven leading models is actually not that large,” Gates said in an interview in New York recently. His comments came as the Gates Foundation announced at least $1 billion in AI funding over the next two years, aimed at bringing AI tools to poorer countries in areas including healthcare, education and agriculture.

Bill Gates says China and US are in AI 'super competition'

During the interview, Bill Gates was asked about the progress of Chinese open-source AI models and gave a strong assessment of the country's development. Gates said China and the US each have four or more institutions with models capable of maintaining state-of-the-art performance, while also describing the two countries as being in a “super competition” over AI talent and computing power. He, however, did not name the institutions.

Gates also said the world's eight leading large language models have all moved beyond the best performance seen about four months earlier. He described the AI race between China and the US as a “super competition”, with both countries competing for talent and computing power.

Bill Gates says China's AI progress could benefit poorer countries

Bill Gates said the competition between the two countries could have an unexpected benefit for developing nations. He said the availability of more high-performing models could give low-income countries, including those in Africa, access to cheaper AI tools.Open-source AI models, he added, provide “great flexibility.” Gates said some African countries already borrow servers from Chinese partners to run AI models remotely. He said the delay in communication is still low enough for many uses.He suggested that African countries should focus their own limited resources on areas where local development is most important, such as language support and local data.

Bill Gates proposes 5% of China and US computing power for poorer nations

Gates also proposed that China and the US each provide around 5% of their data-centre computing power for use by poorer countries.

He compared the idea to foreign aid and said the computing resources could support healthcare, agriculture and education.“If you're just answering questions about health or farming, the token consumption isn't that high,” Gates said. He argued that the world should establish a basic level of AI access so that people everywhere can benefit from the technology.

Gates Foundation commits $1 billion to AI equity

The Gates Foundation said it will invest at least $1 billion over the next two years to improve access to AI in poorer parts of the world.

About $400 million will go toward healthcare. The foundation wants to support tools that can help clinicians review reports and spot symptoms that may have been missed.Another $400 million will focus on education, including tools that can help teachers redesign lessons around areas where students struggle. Around $100 million will support agriculture, including AI tools that can give farmers advice on weather, pests and fertilisation. Another $100 million will go toward building language datasets that are currently poorly represented in AI systems.