China weighs open-weight AI’s security risks against national tech innovation strategy: researchers

Chinese researchers warn that as open-weight AI models like Zhipu AI's GLM-5.2 approach frontier-level capabilities, China may impose stricter regulations similar to US restrictions on Anthropic's Claude Mythos, balancing security risks against national tech innovation strategy.

China weighs open-weight AI’s security risks against national tech innovation strategy: researchers As cutting-edge models like Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 rapidly close the performance gap with frontier models, policy analysts warn a regulatory shift may be imminent race for technological supremacy https://www.scmp.com/topics/us-china-tech-war?module=inline&pgtype=article with the United States, researchers said. Traditionally, open-weight models – which allow anyone to download code for free and run it on local hardware – have lagged months behind proprietary frontier models. But recent releases from Chinese labs have significantly narrowed that gap. Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3359170/zhipu-ai-releases-harness-glm-52-model-chinese-firm-takes-aim-anthropic?module=inline&pgtype=article recently became the first Chinese large language model LLM to rank among the top three globally on leading benchmarks, earning praise from users as the country’s first open-weight model reliable enough for daily coding workflows. But as these AI models advance rapidly, analysts warned that a regulatory response could be on the horizon. “As open-weight models approach the kind of cyber and biosecurity risks of Mythos and other leading-edge models, China may make the same calculation as the US and find them to be too dangerous to be released, especially in open form,” said Mark Witzke, a non-resident scholar at the University of California San Diego who researches US-China tech policy. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3356555/anthropic-opens-powerful-mythos-ai-model-public-some-safeguards?module=inline&pgtype=article . Announced in April, the powerful LLM rattled global industries with its ability to autonomously identify and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Amid warnings that its advanced reasoning capabilities could lower the technical barriers to developing bioweapons, the US lab restricted Mythos to a select group of American organisations.