OpenAI CEO Sam Altman cautioned that China’s AI progress is broader and faster than many in Washington assume — and export controls alone won’t slow it down.
- China is advancing in research, productization, and inference capacity
- Altman said U.S. chip restrictions are “unlikely to work” as a long-term barrier
- He admitted OpenAI released open-weight models partly to counter China’s open-source surge
Altman’s message: the real AI race isn’t about bans, but about who shapes the global standard.