China’s Open-Source AI Could Narrow Global Income Gap, Economist Says

China’s focus on open-source artificial intelligence models could help bridge the income gap between developed and developing economies by lowering technology barriers, according to prominent Chinese economist Justin Yifu Lin.

Lin, dean of Peking University’s Institute of New Structural Economics and a former World Bank chief economist, said the current AI boom could play out differently from previous industrial revolutions because powerful models are increasingly available at low cost — or free — to users outside the countries that developed them.