"Why open source? The answer is very simple, for AGI (artificial general intelligence) to come faster."
On November 3, DeepSeek research engineer Gao Xi responded to DeepSeek’s open source logic at the “Artificial Intelligence Wuzhen Dialogue” at the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit.
AGI is regarded as one of the ultimate goals of the development of artificial intelligence, representing an artificial intelligence system that reaches or exceeds human levels on any cognitive task. "If AGI was supposed to arrive in 10 years, I would hope to arrive in one year. If AGI was supposed to arrive in one year, then I hope to arrive tomorrow." Gao Xi's words expressed his original intention of accelerating the development of AI through open source.
DeepSeek can be said to be a pioneer in open source. Recently, it announced that its internal inference framework DeepInfer will be fully open source. The choice of open source also made DeepSeek possible. Data from OpenRouter, a global AI model aggregation platform, shows that from October 19th to 25th, DeepSeek ranked first in the world.
Bernd Holznagel, a professor at the University of Münster in Germany, told Sanlihe that many companies in Silicon Valley and 40%-50% of small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany are now using China's large open source models. "I've also used DeepSeek, it's very useful."
Open source is a distinctive sign of China’s big model. Tsai Chongxin, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, said that Chinese colleagues’ unanimous choice of open source in AI development is an important spiritual core of Chinese innovation. Only if AI is open source can it be popularized, and only if it is popularized can we create a sustainable and inclusive intelligent era.
According to Liu Dayiheng, head of the Qianwenda language model project of Alibaba's ATH business group, open source has changed the paradigm of AI innovation, so that core technology is no longer only in the hands of a few companies, but allows global developers and ecosystems to participate in innovation. Moreover, the existence of open source models raises the cost-effectiveness of the models to a higher range, avoids the possible price monopoly of closed source models, and lowers the threshold for public use.
However, it is undeniable that the open source model also has risks. How to maintain security and credibility in open source and open up, and narrow the development gap in co-construction and sharing, has become a major global challenge.
Security is not a burden that one company or one country can shoulder alone. "Security cannot be left to fate, and cannot rely solely on a few top scholars or a small group of people. A set of established mechanisms must be established." John Higgins, chairman of the International Artificial Intelligence Governance Association, said that under the open source system, security responsibilities are shared by everyone, so community building is particularly critical.
The theme of this year’s Wuzhen Summit is “Open Source, Openness, Co-construction and Sharing—Working Together to Build a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace.”
In response to global concerns, the "Working Together to Build a Global Open Artificial Intelligence Action Initiative" released during the summit proposed 18 specific action initiatives focusing on four aspects: jointly promoting openness and development, jointly maintaining security and trustworthiness, jointly participating in dialogue and governance, and jointly adhering to mutual benefit and inclusiveness.
The signal it conveys is very clear. AI is not a game played alone. It requires discussion, co-construction and sharing of governance ideas to build a fair, trustworthy and sustainable intelligent ecosystem together.
In the final analysis, this discussion on open source in Wuzhen not only answers the technical route of a company, but also what kind of path we want to take in the AI era.
There are two ways to take the road of AI. One is to hold on to technology and close the door to enjoy the dividends; the other is to open the door and gather the wisdom of the world to move forward together. Open source, choose the latter.
Reality has shown that it is difficult to independently support global fair and inclusive development by building a closed ecosystem with "high walls" and a "digital iron curtain". Although there are still many difficulties in the road ahead for open source, it is the aspiration of the people and the general trend.
｜Chief Planner: Yu Lan
｜Planner: Zhou Rui
｜Coordinator: Wang Qingkai
｜Written by: Li Jinlei
｜Editor: Cheng Chunyu
｜Proofreading: Huang Lei
｜Produced by "Sanlihe" Studio
