Recently The New York Times reported the following:
Chinese A.I. Models Close the Gap with Anthropic and
OpenAI (2/2)
Silicon Valley engineers recently flocked to new
technology from a Chinese company, Z.ai, that is almost as good as its American
competitors but much cheaper.
By Cade MetzKaren Weise and Meaghan Tobin - Cade Metz reported from San Francisco, Karen Weise from Seattle and Meaghan Tobin from Taipei, Taiwan.
June 25, 2026
(continue)
Companies can still use the model without sending data back
to China in violation of U.S. export rules, as long as they are careful about
how they set up their systems, said Wei Chen, chief legal officer at Infoblox,
a network security company.
“The Chinese models do not have the same restrictions if you host them yourself or you go through another provider,” Mr. Ahmad of alphaXiv said. “Right now, there are more restrictions on models from Anthropic.”
After DeepSeek’s release in 2025, governments around the world passed regulations limiting its use because of data security concerns. But so far, GLM-5.2 has not raised similar alarms, Ms. Chen said.
Anthropic and OpenAI have accused Chinese companies of improperly harvesting data from their A.I. systems to accelerate the development of the Chinese technology. On Wednesday, Anthropic sent a letter, viewed by The New York Times, to Senators Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, accusing the Chinese tech giant Alibaba of “brazenly” and “illicitly” trying to copy its technology through 24,000 fraudulent accounts.
Alibaba declined to comment.
When Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft’s A.I. lab, unveiled a suite of new models this month, he emphasized that they had been built from scratch on data that the company had commercially licensed.
“That means that you can put it into production in a very trustworthy way with complete confidence,” he said.
Using data from one system to train another — a process called distillation — is common in A.I. development. But the Anthropic and OpenAI terms of service forbid anyone to surreptitiously harvest data for distillation. It is not clear whether Z.ai used distillation in the development of its technology.
But distillation alone cannot build a top A.I. system. That requires several other complex techniques as well, said Charles O’Neill, head of model training at Baseten, a company that sells access to GLM-5.2.
“This narrative that all of the capabilities of these models are coming from Anthropic is not as true as people say it is,” Mr. O’Neill said.
Chinese A.I. start-ups can offer their models as an open-source technology at far lower prices in part because the industry has benefited from years of support from the Chinese government, which views A.I. as a critical engine of economic growth.
Many executives have said U.S. companies should not open-source their technology because it could be used in harmful situations. But other experts argue that if regulators stifle open-source technology in the United States, China will gain a significant edge.
Because China produces most of the top-performing open-source systems, they say, U.S. developers will build their software atop those technologies. In the long run, that could put China at the heart of A.I. development.
Some argue that Chinese systems will always trail the top U.S. models because U.S. export controls limit the flow of the specialized computer chips needed to train A.I. technologies. Z.ai and other Chinese start-ups spend millions for access to chips in data centers outside China.
Z.ai’s filings in Hong Kong show that in the first half of 2025, the company spent more than seven times its revenue on expenses that essentially boiled down to fees for such computing services.
Still, experts estimate that China is just six months or less behind the American companies.
“There had been this speculation that the export controls would eventually bite and the gap would widen between American frontier models and their Chinese models, but GLM is pushing things in the other direction,” said Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who specializes in emerging technology and international relations.
And with Fable and Mythos sidelined, many businesses have realized the importance of having alternatives.
“There is a bit of apprehension at large organizations about loyalty,” said Justin Summerville, who runs data analytics at OpenRouter. “Who knows what the top model will be in three weeks?”
Translation
中國人工智能模型縮小與
Anthropic 和
OpenAI 的差距
(2/2)
矽谷工程師最近紛紛湧向一家中國公司 Z.ai 的新技術，它幾乎與美國競爭對手不相伯仲，但價格卻便宜得多
（繼續）
網路安全公司 Infoblox 的首席法務官Wei Chen表示，只要企業謹慎設置係統，就無需將數據發送回中國，而可以在不違反美國出口管制條例的情況下使用該模型。
alphaXiv 的 Ahmad 先生表示： “如果您在自己的伺服器上運行或通過其他提供商，則中國模型不受同樣的限制。目前，Anthropic 的模型受到的限制更多。”
DeepSeek於2025年發佈後，基於資料安全的擔憂，世界各國政府紛紛推出法規限制其使用。但Chen女士表示，到目前為止，GLM-5.2尚未引發類似的擔憂。
Anthropic和OpenAI指責中國公司不正當地從其人工智能系統中竊取數據，以加速中國技術的發展。週三，Anthropic致函南卡羅來納州共和黨參議員Tim Scott和馬薩諸塞州民主黨參議員Elizabeth Warren（《紐約時報》看過該信函），指責中國科技巨頭阿里巴巴 “明目張膽” 且 “非法” 地試圖通過2.4萬個欺詐賬戶複製其技術。
阿里巴巴拒絕置評。
本月，微軟人工智能實驗室負責人Mustafa Suleyman發佈了一系列新模型，他強調這些模型是基於微軟已獲得商業許可的數據從零開始建構的。
他說:「這意味著您可以完全放心地以非常可靠的方式將其投入製作」。
利用一個系統的資料來訓練另一個系統 - 這個過程被稱為資料蒸餾 - 在人工智能開發中很常見。但Anthropic和OpenAI的服務條款禁止任何人暗中收集資料用於資料蒸餾。目前尚不清楚Z.ai在其技術開發過程中是否使用了蒸餾方法。
但僅靠數據蒸餾是無法建構頂級的人工智能系統。 Baseten公司模型訓練負責人Charles O’Neill表示，這還需要其他幾種複雜的技術。 Baseten是一家出售GLM-5.2存取權限的公司。
O’Neill先生說: 「認為這些模型的所有功能都來自Anthropic的說法並不像人們所說的那樣真確」。
中國的人工智能初創公司能夠以遠低於其他國家的價格去提供開源模型，部分原因是該行業多年來一直受益於中國政府的支持，中國政府將人工智能視為經濟成長的關鍵引擎。
許多高階主管表示，美國公司不應開源其技術，因為這些技術可能被用於有害用途。但亦有專家則認為，如果美國監管機構扼殺開源技術，中國將獲得顯著優勢。
他們指出，由於中國生產了大多數性能卓越的開源系統，美國開發者將基於這些技術建立軟件。從長遠來看，這可能使中國成為人工智能發展的中心。
有些人認為，由於美國出口管制限制了訓練人工智能技術所需的專用電腦晶片的流通，中國系統將始終都落後於美國頂尖模型。 Z.ai 和其他中國新創公司花費數百萬美元取得中國境外數據庫的晶片的使用權。
Z.ai 在香港提交的文件顯示，該公司在 2025 年上半年的支出超過了其收入的七倍，而這些支出實際上主要用於支付此類計算服務的費用。
儘管如此，專家估計中國在人工智能領域僅落後美國公司六個月或更短的時間。
喬治·華盛頓大學 專業於新興技術與國際關係的助理教授Jeffrey Ding說:「先前一直有傳言說，出口管制最終會起到作用，美國尖端模型與中國模型之間的差距會進一步擴大，但GLM卻把情況推向相反的方向發展」。
隨著Fable和Mythos的退出，許多企業意識到擁有替代方案的重要性。
So, recently, a Chinese start-up Z.ai has released an A.I. model that is nearly as powerful as Anthropic’s
models. But Z.ai’s new technology costs much less to use. Powerful but
inexpensive A.I. from China that is challenging the hurdles that OpenAI,
Anthropic and Google have put on the industry. Apparently, in the field of A.I.
development, the presence of China is obvious.
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