Faced with less compute and fewer tokens, Chinese AI labs are tightening the gap with the US by just being more efficient

(Credit: Alex Wong–Getty Images)

The race between the world’s two biggest economies to dominate AI recently escalated with new accusations and raised the question of how China came to rival the U.S.’s AI capabilities.

Six Chinese AI companies, U.S. officials alleged earlier this week, found a shortcut to closing the gap with American AI labs by buying bulk subscriptions to their American rivals and then training on the outputs.