Kimi K2’s release flew under the radar by comparison. But it\u00a0scored high on Humanity’s Last Exam,\u00a0a notoriously difficult, 2,500-question benchmark<\/a>\u00a0that tests an AI’s reasoning abilities beyond regurgitating information, placing\u00a0just behind<\/a>\u00a0recent ChatGPT models and surpassing both Claude 4.5 and Meta’s Llama.<\/p>\n “It is definitely [still] the case that the U.S. is ahead of China on AI,” said Dan Wang, the author of\u00a0Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. But, according to those same benchmarks, that lead “is narrowing in all sorts of ways.”<\/p>\n Whether China’s advancements against the U.S. matter depends on who you ask, according to experts who spoke with CBC News.\u00a0<\/p>\n That some North American companies and\u00a0consumers<\/a>\u00a0are choosing\u00a0Chinese-made AI\u00a0“just tells you about the technical sophistication that we’re seeing from China and that it really rivals the best from what we’re seeing in the U.S. right now,” said Sheldon Fernandez, the Toronto-based co-founder of DarwinAI, which developed AI for quality control in manufacturing and has since been acquired by Apple.<\/p>\n Open-source AI models like the ones being developed in China\u00a0“are cheaper and you can control them in your own environment,” he said.\u00a0They\u00a0can be modified to suit a user’s needs, though that might require some technical expertise.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lamenting that ChatGPT wasn’t “quite robust enough,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky\u00a0said last month<\/a>\u00a0that the vacation rental company relies heavily on Chinese-owned Alibaba\u2019s Qwen model to power its\u00a0AI agents<\/a>.<\/p>\n And venture capital firm Social Capital recently migrated its workload to Kimi K2 because it performed more efficiently and was “frankly just a ton cheaper than OpenAI and Anthropic,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, the company’s Canadian-American CEO, while co-hosting the\u00a0All In\u00a0podcast.<\/p>\n Deng, the Bloomberg analyst, says he doesn\u2019t expect Chinese models to take over the market anytime soon.\u201dBut they will always be there to put competitive pressure on U.S. models,\u201d maintaining a price ceiling on the cost of AI, he said.<\/p>\n Beyond the marketplace, there are those who view the race to improve AI in the harsher light of potential real-world conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n LISTEN | Winners and losers in the AI race:<\/p>\n The House14:32Who wins and who loses as countries race for AI dominance<\/p>\n “It is a sense that the U.S. and China are in a new state of cold war,” said Wang, adding that some see artificial intelligence as being a “decisive technology” on the scale of atomic weapons or the space race \u2014 one that could have serious economic and national security implications.<\/p>\n Similarly, Fernandez says that some view the race to advance AI as a means of instilling in the technology a particular set of values.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not just a question of capability,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s a question of what values do we want in these systems, both as consumers ourselves, but for our children, for marginalized communities. And that is why this is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n On that note, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0in a recent op-ed that Chinese AI dominance would mean “state-run surveillance and coercion,” while an American win would guarantee a technology anchored by “liberty, human dignity, and the rule of law.”<\/p>\n That might be overly optimistic, though, given the\u00a0cultural biases<\/a>,\u00a0distasteful politics<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0selective memories<\/a>\u00a0demonstrated by AIs from\u00a0either country.\u00a0<\/p>\n WATCH | How Deepseek shook up the American stock market: What is DeepSeek and why is it shaking up the U.S. tech market?<\/p>\n Chinese AI app DeepSeek has become a top rated app in the U.S. but its surging popularity and low costs have disrupted financial markets and raised concerns among North American leaders in artificial intelligence. Francis Syms of Humber Polytechnic sits down with Metro Morning\u2019s David Common to discuss the latest headlines on artificial intelligence and how it might affect us.<\/p>\n Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has similarly said it is “vital” that America win the AI race,\u00a0and that China is mere \u201cnanoseconds\u201d behind the U.S. in developing the technology. Of course, Nvidia \u2014 as the top supplier of semiconductor chips to many of the U.S.\u2019s top AI companies \u2014 has an obvious horse in this race.<\/p>\n But there are those, says Wang, “who believe that it might not necessarily matter because nobody really knows what AI is, and what it might actually do in the future.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Both countries have strengths and limitations. Compared to the U.S., China has\u00a0become a force<\/a>\u00a0to be\u00a0reckoned with on electrical capacity<\/a>, which it needs to power AI.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763727368_306_default.jpg\")
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