Skip to footer
Creativity
The Monitor's View

The drivers of AI’s future

Hanging over a global summit on artificial intelligence was a reminder from Chinese company DeepSeek of the qualities that inspire AI researchers.

|
REUTERS
The logo of DeepSeek is displayed alongside its AI assistant app on a mobile phone.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

In Paris this week, a global summit on artificial intelligence was as freewheeling and inquisitive as the researchers making AI breakthroughs. India’s leader, for example, spoke of “re-skilling our people” for an AI-driven future. France warned against too much red tape on AI.

“If we regulate before we innovate, we won’t have any innovation of our own,” President Emmanuel Macron told France 2 television.

Many leaders promised big investments in AI research or guarantees of electricity for the computer chips driving AI’s demanding software. The United Kingdom’s technology secretary, Peter Kyle, told Politico that trends in AI “are being set by the power of the technology itself.”

So far, the power behind AI is mainly the intelligence, creativity, and curiosity expressed by those lifting the technology to new levels. That fact hung over the summit – and was made clear to the world – after the Chinese company DeepSeek revealed its latest AI model in January.  

DeepSeek’s advances in cost efficiency stunned competitors. Yet the biggest surprise was how the founder, engineer Liang Wenfeng, broke through mental barriers in a China that has long prized profits and simple refinement of technology invented elsewhere.

Mr. Liang chose an open-source approach that allows outsiders to contribute, rather than rushing to commercialization. He sees accessibility and affordability as gifts to users. “Giving is actually an extra honor,” he told the Chinese news outlet 36Kr.

He says attracting users is not the purpose. Rather, achieving the highest possible breakthroughs in AI is the goal. 

In 2023, Mr. Liang started a research lab that hired more than 100 young engineers – as well as graduates in literature – who have the “confidence” to be original rather than imitative. China, he said, must “become a contributor, rather than just a free rider” in technology.

His style is more followership than leadership. “Everyone has his or her own unique growth experience and ideas, and there is no need to push him or her,” said Mr. Liang. He gives workers a “luxury” that few in China enjoy – the freedom to experiment and a collaborative culture, a former DeepSeek researcher told MIT Technology Review.

Innovation, said Mr. Liang, “requires curiosity and creativity” and that the quest for new ideas by “high-density” talent is the company’s “moat” against competitors.

“The most important thing now is to participate in the wave of global innovation,” he said. During this week’s summit on AI, that spirit of exploration was exactly what world leaders were trying to find.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.

 
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The drivers of AI’s future
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2025/0211/The-drivers-of-AI-s-future
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe