The ongoing 2025 Global Developer Conference in Shanghai highlights the rising trend of promoting open-source models in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, which is less costly than closed-source models and is poised to attract massive users by providing free services.
The developer conference, which opened on Friday and will run through Sunday, has brought together more than 100 developer communities from around the world to discuss promoting AI application, with attending enterprises debuting multiple open-source large language models (LLM).
Open-source AI models are more flexible, transparent and cost-efficient compared with their closed-source counterparts. According to the conference, China has been making accelerated breakthroughs in developing open-source AI model technologies and products, which helps bring opportunities to the country's AI industry.
"Within just 24 hours, creators around the world made a great number of AI-generated videos. More and more partners have joined our open-source ecosystem," said Jiang Daxin, an exhibitor.
High-level open-source large models can help accelerate development of the AI industry and give the public free access to the capability of exceptional large models. Many AI exhibitors say they are expecting open-source models to bring technological advance and broaden application of AI products.
"Through open sources, we can improve the models and the applications. We can also promote wider use of AI technologies in more fields and industries," said Jia Anya, another exhibitor.
Shanghai, as the host city of the AI conference, has been nurturing a fertile business environment for both domestic and international AI enterprises, innovation teams, and talents to develop. By the end of 2024, the industry scale of Shanghai's AI sector had surpassed 450 billion yuan (over 62 billion U.S. dollars).
"Shanghai will continue promoting computing power construction, and by the end of this year the city will have added 100,000 batches of new computing power to boost the development of its public computing power service platform. Shanghai has established the first AI corpus company in China. Through the corpus public service platform, we will launch a program for inclusive corpus service and promote corpus public services, in efforts to develop a series of services including corpora and corpus tools to provide more service for entrepreneurs and developers," said Pan Yan, director of the artificial intelligence department of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.
Global Developer Conference highlights open-source AI models
Global Developer Conference highlights open-source AI models
International guests who have dedicated their lives to historical truth joined China's 12th national memorial event honoring the hundreds of thousands of victims killed by Japanese troops in the Nanjing Massacre during World War II.
The memorial was held on Saturday at the public square of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province. China's national flag was flown at half-mast in the presence the crowd that included survivors of the massacre, local students, and international guests.
In one of the most barbaric episodes during WWII, the Nanjing Massacre took place when Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital Nanjing on Dec 13, 1937. Over the course of six weeks, they proceeded to kill approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers.
Joining the crowd was Christoph Reinhardt, the great-grandson of John Rabe (1882-1950) who was then a representative of German conglomerate Siemens in the war-ravaged Nanjing. During the Nanjing Massacre, Rabe set up an international safety zone with other foreigners, and they together saved the lives of around 250,000 Chinese people between 1937 and 1938 from the Japanese invaders.
Throughout the massacre, Rabe continued to keep a diary. To this day, all his pages remain one of the most comprehensive historical records of the atrocities committed by the Japanese aggressors.
Sayoko Yamauchi, who was also in the crowd of mourners, arrived in Nanjing on Friday from Japan's Osaka to attend Saturday's ceremony, just as she has done almost every year since China designated Dec 13 as the National Memorial Day for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre in 2014.
Yamauchi's grandfather was one of the Japanese soldiers who invaded Nanjing in January 1938. However, since first setting foot in Nanjing in 1987, she has dedicated herself to uncovering and spreading the truth about Japan's history of aggression and enlightening the Japanese public about their country's wartime atrocities.
In 2014, ahead of China's first National Memorial Day for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, Yamauchi, along with 10 other individuals, received an award for her special contribution to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
By attending the grand memorial event, Reinhardt and Yamauchi both said they hope to convey a message of remembering history and cherishing peace.
"This is my fifth visit to China, and Nanjing, and the third times I visited the ceremony. I have a wish that these survivors survive again and again and again. But my other wish is that the families of the survivors, that they transport the information, the right intention like their ancestors, because anyone must hold a hand (during) this remembering," Reinhardt told China Central Television (CCTV) in an interview before the event began on Saturday.
"Our delegation is on its 20th visit to China, coming to Nanjing to express our heartfelt condolences to those who perished 88 years ago, to remember this history, and to reflect on what we can do for a new future. That's why we are here," Yamauchi told CCTV on board the bus that took her to a local hotel in Nanjing on Friday evening.
Int'l guests call for remembering history at China's national event honoring Nanjing Massacre victims
