Our desire for better local models just happens to coincide with China's desire to destroy the western AI company business model by releasing local models. I doubt there's any philanthropy involved.
They literally announced their motivations and world few a few weeks ago at the Shanghai AI conference. They want to ally with the global south. They see AI like the industrial revolution: the global south was left behind for a long time and, as a result has been exploited and has struggled to develop for a long time. They see open AI as a way to level the playing field to prevent such "new historical injustices" (in the sense of the Century of Humiliation and the Opium Wars). Concrete policies to back this rhetoric include technology transfer and training programs for the global south. They frame this latter not as philantropy but as generosity, in the sense that it generates goodwill and what goes around comes around. They believe that helping the global south and cultivating relationships will eventually help China.
Think about it. Your local businesses are not charities either. That doesn't make them bad, nor does it mean you derive no benefit. It still benefits you to cultivate good relationships with them.
No matter what you believe is their "true" intentions, offering 5000 training and tech transfer positions to the global south is a very concrete and unambiguous move. As are forgiving African loans and unilaterally offering zero trade tariffs.
I'm not saying that China's investment in the South hasn't had positive effects. But "generosity" is rarely a relevant lens when analyzing international relations.
Well, yes? Why does it have to be either-or?
> But "generosity" is rarely a relevant lens when analyzing international relations.
Automatically assuming nefarious intentions behind all moves is also rarely a relevant lens.
And as I said, and I'm not sure why you keep ignoring it, but I define "generosity" in the sense of mutual benefit. Being nice to your neighbors and helping them, benefits you due to generated goodwill. I'm explicitly not defining generosity in the sense of selfless philanthropy where you get nothing back. The idea that doing good things for others eventually results in good things coming your way, and thus that one should do good things for others even it's selfishly motivated (and also that there's nothing wrong with this), is not a crazy idea.
In a lot of cultures (Chinese included), gifts are not simply gifts. There is the social expectation that the gift is reciprocated. Western cynicists may call this "manipulation" or "influence". The Chinese see this as the start of a relationship of a cycle of mutual gift giving.
Nothing happens on a geopolitical scale, from the US, China or anyone else, simply because of generosity.
China also puts pressure on rich chinese flaunting their riches.
They have a common prosperity initiative.