Europe Must Invest in Open Source AI or Cede To China, Schmidt Says (bloomberg.com)
(Tuesday January 20, 2026 @11:44AM (msmash)
from the state-of-affairs dept.)
- Reference: 0180620400
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/20/1620212/europe-must-invest-in-open-source-ai-or-cede-to-china-schmidt-says
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-20/europe-must-invest-in-open-source-ai-or-cede-to-china-schmidt
An anonymous reader shares a report:
> Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or [1]it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models , former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said.
>
> "In the US, the companies are largely moving to closed source, which means they'll be purchased and licensed and so forth. And it is also the case that China is largely open weight, open source in its approach," Schmidt said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. "Unless Europe is willing to spend lots of money for European models, Europe will end up using the Chinese models. It's probably not a good outcome for Europe."
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-20/europe-must-invest-in-open-source-ai-or-cede-to-china-schmidt
> Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or [1]it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models , former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said.
>
> "In the US, the companies are largely moving to closed source, which means they'll be purchased and licensed and so forth. And it is also the case that China is largely open weight, open source in its approach," Schmidt said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. "Unless Europe is willing to spend lots of money for European models, Europe will end up using the Chinese models. It's probably not a good outcome for Europe."
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-20/europe-must-invest-in-open-source-ai-or-cede-to-china-schmidt
oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
So to be clear, it's not good for Europe to depend on open source models they don't have to pay for where someone else is doing the work and spending the energy to create them? Sounds terrible all right.
Re: (Score:2)
by 0123456 ( 636235 )
Relying on a country you may be at war with before long... what could possibly go wrong?
Re: oh no (Score:2)
by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
Anyone who is making themselves reliant on general purpose LLM technology is fucking themselves over no matter who controls it.
How about no (Score:3)
by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )
There is no reason to waste money on bullshit, and the world's biggest advertisement peddler is no visionary of any kind.
Just wait for the bubble to pop (Score:1)
...and then laugh at both 'Murica and Jiiihna.