Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has urged Western nations to focus on developing open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models, cautioning that failure to do so could lead to China taking the lead in AI innovation. His remarks, reported by the Financial Times (FT), come in the wake of Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s launch of R1, a powerful open large language model (LLM) that has challenged the dominance of US-developed AI.
Speaking at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Schmidt emphasized the risk posed by the West’s reliance on closed AI models, such as Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s GPT-4. Meta’s Llama remains one of the few open-source alternatives available. “If we don’t do something about that, China will ultimately become the open-source leader and the rest of the world will become closed-source,” Schmidt warned.
Schmidt, now a major technology investor and philanthropist, expressed concerns that Western universities might struggle to afford access to closed AI models, thereby stifling scientific discovery. He stressed that investment in open-source AI is crucial for maintaining innovation within academia and industry.
The summit also saw US Vice-President JD Vance reaffirm America’s commitment to AI leadership. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted he had been on the “wrong side of history” regarding open-source AI and suggested a shift in strategy for the company. Despite this, OpenAI continues to attract significant investment, including talks with SoftBank over a potential funding round at a $260 billion valuation. Other tech giants, such as Google and Amazon, remain focused on closed models to ensure returns on their AI investments.
Schmidt believes that the future of AI dominance will depend on striking a balance between open- and closed-source models. He also highlighted Europe’s opportunity to leverage AI by focusing on applications that enhance economic productivity. “Europe’s got to get its act together,” he stated. “The application layer is profoundly powerful, and it will make Europe more efficient.”
In a move to address AI safety concerns, Schmidt announced a $10 million investment through Schmidt Sciences, a non-profit he co-founded with his wife, Wendy. The initiative will fund 27 research projects tackling AI safety challenges. Among the awardees are Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award-winning computer scientist working on AI risk mitigation, and Zico Kolter, an OpenAI board member and Carnegie Mellon professor researching AI security vulnerabilities.
Schmidt also advocated for international cooperation on AI safety, suggesting that the West and China should collaborate on safety protocols. He likened this to military information sharing in weapons testing, arguing that ensuring AI safety should be a global priority. “How could it possibly be bad for us to give them information that they could use to make their models more safe?” he posed.
