China’s AI ecosystem is not as open as it claims. Nor is any other country’s
Responding to an article by China’s ambassador to the UK, Prof Paul H Cleverley advocates shared openness standards, while Dr Claire Jenkinssays British AI can offer a distinctive path
Ambassador Zheng Zeguang rightly celebrates openly released AI models, and the Chinese labs behind Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi have led the way – competition that benefits everyone, especially where models can run on modest hardware in the developing world (The future of AI hinges on openness and cooperation. China and Britain can gain much by working together, 30 July)
But his claim that openness is a defining feature of China’s AI development deserves scrutiny. Take GeoGPT, the geoscience system from Zhejiang Lab showcased at last month’s World AI Conference as a model of jointly governed open science. It is promoted to countries as open, yet under the model openness framework – endorsed in a recent UN report – it would not qualify as open at all. It releases model weights (built mainly on Alibaba Qwen, whose licences are not Open Systems Interconnection-compliant), no training data or application source code is released, and its governance committee answers to Zhejiang Lab itself.
Domain rivals show what fuller openness looks like. The European Space Agency’s Earth Virtual Expert (EVE), also built for the Earth sciences, releases its training and evaluation tooling, while the US non-profit Ai2’s OLMo goes further still, publishing everything needed for reproducibility
The distinction matters. A free hosted service is not an open one: GeoGPT’s users route their data through China’s legal jurisdiction, creating real dependency and sovereignty risks
None of this is unique to China. The US private-enterprise model raises much the same concerns. That is really the ambassador’s own point extended: no country’s ecosystem is quite as open as its diplomacy suggests. If the UK is to gain from the cooperation he proposes, it should press for shared openness standards like the UN-recommended model openness framework as the basis for any joint work. Honest measurement, not just the language of openness, is where real partnership begins.Prof Paul H CleverleyRobert Gordon University, Aberdeen
Your article rightly argues that Britain cannot afford to be a passive consumer of AI while the US and China shape the technologies that will define the future. Yet the debate should not be reduced to a geopolitical race
The real question is what kind of AI Britain wishes to build. Our greatest strength is not simply our research universities or life-sciences sector, but the NHS, our public institutions and a long tradition of ethical inquiry. These provide an opportunity to develop AI that is trustworthy, transparent and directed towards the public good rather than solely commercial advantage
Healthcare illustrates both the promise and the risk. AI can reduce administrative burdens, improve diagnosis and widen access to care. However, public confidence depends on strong governance, meaningful human oversight and assurance that patient data serves citizens rather than corporate or geopolitical interests. Recent work by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’snational commission into the regulation of AI in healthcare has highlighted exactly these concerns
Britain should resist the temptation to imitate either Silicon Valley’s market dominance or China’s state-led model. Instead, it could offer a distinctive path: AI that combines innovation with democratic accountability, scientific excellence and social justice. That would be a form of leadership worthy of Britain’s traditions – and one that others might choose to follow.Dr Claire JenkinsWollaton, Nottinghamshire
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