ELI TAN2026年9月7日AT&T turned to artificial intelligence models from Anthropic and OpenAI in recent years to help with customer service, call transcription and coding. The A.I. models charged fees and were “closed,” which meant the A.I. companies did not share their underlying code.近年来，AT&T转向使用Anthropic和OpenAI的人工智能模型来协助客户服务、通话转录和编程。这些人工智能模型需要付费，而且是“封闭”的，这意味着人工智能公司不会分享其底层代码。This year, AT&T changed course.今年，AT&T改变了策略。As A.I. costs skyrocketed, Andy Markus, the company’s chief data and A.I. officer, looked for cheaper alternatives. He landed on “open” models, which can be downloaded and modified without payment or approval.随着人工智能成本飙升，该公司首席数据和AI官安迪·马库斯开始寻找便宜的替代方案。他选择了开放模型，这种模型可以无需付费或批准即可下载和修改。By May, open models accounted for 20 percent of AT&T’s A.I. use. That has since risen to 40 percent and may jump to 60 percent in the coming months, Mr. Markus said in an interview.到今年5月，开放模型已占AT&T人工智能使用量的20%。马库斯在接受采访时表示，这一比例此后已升至40%，并可能在未来几个月跃升至60%。“We believe it could go much, much higher,” he said, adding that AT&T was saving up to 80 percent on A.I. costs compared with earlier this year.“我们相信这个比例可能会更高，”他说，并补充道，与今年早些时候相比，AT&T目前在人工智能方面的成本最高已经节省了80%。Open-source artificial intelligence has become all the rage in corporate America. Like AT&T, companies such as Airbnb and Deloitte are also turning to open A.I. models that are easy to customize and cheaper to use. Last month, open models accounted for 58 percent of A.I. use, up from 10 percent a year ago, according to U.S. user data from OpenRouter, a platform that lets people choose different A.I. models to complete tasks.开源人工智能已成为美国企业界的热门趋势。与AT&T一样，爱彼迎和德勤等公司也在转向易于定制且使用成本更低的开放模型。据OpenRouter平台的美国用户数据显示，上个月开放模型占人工智能使用量的58%，而一年前这一比例仅为10%。OpenRouter是一个让用户选择不同人工智能模型来完成任务的平台。On Thursday, the chip maker Nvidia announced it was buying Hugging Face, a library of open A.I. models, for $12.9 billion, another sign of the technology’s importance.周四，芯片制造商英伟达宣布以129亿美元收购开放人工智能模型库Hugging Face，再次彰显了该技术的重要性。“Together, we will make A.I. more open, more capable and more accessible to people and institutions around the world,” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said.“我们将共同努力，让AI变得更加开放、更加强大，并让世界各地的个人和机构都能更容易地使用它，”英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋表示。Open models come in two flavors. One is an open-source model, which makes its underlying code public. The other is an open-weights model, which makes its “weights” — the numerical calculations that determine how the model reasons — public.开放模型分为两种。一种是开源模型，公开其底层代码。另一种是开放权重模型，公开其"权重"——即决定模型如何推理的数值计算参数。Many of the most popular open A.I. models are made by Chinese companies like Moonshot AI, DeepSeek and Alibaba. Rather than spending millions in fees to use a closed model, developers can download one of the Chinese systems and build their products on top of it, paying mainly for servers. OpenAI and Anthropic charge for subscriptions and other fees, depending on the job.许多最受欢迎的开放模型由中国公司开发，如月之暗面、DeepSeek和阿里巴巴。开发者无需花费数百万美元使用封闭模型，只需下载其中一个中国系统，在其基础上构建产品，主要支付服务器费用即可。OpenAI和Anthropic则根据任务收取订阅费及其他费用。Some Chinese open models are now 80 percent to 90 percent as powerful as those from OpenAI and Anthropic, while costing as little as 20 percent of the price, said Jerry Tang, the chief executive of Atlas Cloud, a start-up that provides access to various A.I. models. He compared the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic to pricey sports cars — powerful, but not always necessary.Atlas Cloud是一家提供各种人工智能模型的初创公司，其首席执行官杰瑞·唐（音）表示，一些中国开放模型的性能已达到OpenAI和Anthropic模型的80%至90%，而成本仅为后者的20%。他将OpenAI和Anthropic的领先模型比作昂贵的跑车——强大，但并非总是必需。“Mazdas do a fine job getting you where you need to go, and Maseratis are simply not worth the investment,” Mr. Tang said. Open-source models, he added, “offer a better bang for your buck.”“马自达也能很好地送你到达目的地，而玛莎拉蒂的投资价值并不高，”他说。他还表示，开源模型“性价比更高”。The popularity of open models could spell trouble for Anthropic and OpenAI, which are both heading toward blockbuster initial public offerings. The companies have to charge more as they spend billions on research and development and computing power.开放模型的普及可能对Anthropic和OpenAI构成威胁，这两家公司都在筹备大规模的首次公开募股。由于在研发和算力上投入了数十亿美元，它们不得不收取更高费用。OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied the suit’s claims.)OpenAI和Anthropic未立即回应置评请求。（《纽约时报》已起诉OpenAI和微软，指控其AI系统侵犯了新闻内容的版权。两家公司否认了诉讼中的指控。）The rise of open models plays into a broader debate in Silicon Valley and Washington about control over A.I. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, has argued that A.I. should be tightly regulated to prevent national security concerns. Other tech leaders such as Mr. Huang of Nvidia and Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, have said open-source technology is crucial for having a democratic, balanced A.I. ecosystem.开放模型的兴起引发了硅谷和华盛顿关于人工智能控制权的更广泛辩论。Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫代伊认为，人工智能应受到严格监管以防止国家安全问题。英伟达的黄仁勋和Meta首席执行官马克·扎克伯格等其他科技领袖则表示，开源技术对于建立一个民主、均衡的人工智能生态系统至关重要。After OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, many companies and users gravitated to closed A.I. models. At the time, open-source models were mainly popular among developers.自2022年OpenAI发布ChatGPT以来，许多公司和个人用户都倾向于使用封闭式模型。当时，开源模型主要在开发者中流行。The models began gaining favor last year after the Chinese start-up DeepSeek released one called DeepSeek-V3. It stood out for being nearly as cutting edge as leading closed models, while requiring less computing power. Since then, open models from Chinese companies have increasingly caught up to the performance of closed models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others.去年，中国初创公司DeepSeek发布了一款名为DeepSeek-V3的模型后，这些模型开始受到青睐。它的突出之处在于几乎与领先的封闭模型一样先进，同时需要的算力更少。此后，中国公司的开放模型在性能上越来越接近Anthropic、OpenAI、谷歌等公司的封闭模型。Many open models can now be powered by a phone or laptop, said David Stout, the chief executive of WebAI, an A.I. start-up. That has made the technology more accessible and even cheaper. Leading closed models are getting more complicated and requiring more computing power.人工智能初创公司WebAI的首席执行官戴维·斯托特表示，许多开放模型现在可以由手机或笔记本电脑驱动。这使该技术更加普及且成本更低。而领先的封闭模型正变得越来越复杂，需要更多算力。Most U.S. companies still use a combination of open and closed models. Closed models remain the best for heavy duty tasks like coding and image and video generation, while open models often excel at simple, specialized tasks, Mr. Tang of Atlas Cloud said.Atlas Cloud的杰瑞·唐表示，大多数美国公司仍在混合使用开放和封闭模型。封闭模型在处理编码、图像和视频生成等繁重任务时依然是最佳选择，开放模型则在简单、专业化任务上表现突出。At AT&T, the telecom company is now taking open-weights models and customizing them to make new tools that can transcribe calls and facilitate customer service, Mr. Markus, the company’s chief data and A.I. officer, said.AT&T首席数据和AI官马库斯表示，这家电信公司目前正采用开放权重模型进行定制，以开发可用于通话转录和客户服务的新工具。Some U.S. firms remain reluctant to use Chinese A.I. models because of concerns over regulation and data privacy. AT&T researches Chinese models but is not using them, Mr. Markus said. Instead, it is working with popular alternatives made by American companies such as the Gemma A.I. model from Google and the Llama A.I. models from Meta.一些美国公司因担心监管和数据隐私问题，仍不愿使用中国的人工智能模型。马库斯表示，AT&T在研究中国模型，但并未使用。该公司选择与美国公司开发的流行替代方案合作，例如谷歌的Gemma AI模型和Meta的Llama AI模型。As Chinese models become more popular, some U.S. companies are unveiling new open A.I. models of their own. Last month, Meta made its leading A.I. system an open-weights model and said it would offer the model at a lower cost than other top U.S. models.随着中国模型越来越受欢迎，一些美国公司也在推出自己的新型开放AI模型。上个月，Meta将其领先的AI系统改为开放权重模型，并表示将以低于其他美国顶级模型的价格提供该模型。“I do not believe restricting access to foreign open-source models is an effective solution,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time. “Our goal should be for American open-source models to be the best globally.”“我不认为限制外国开源模型的访问是一种有效解决方案，”扎克伯格当时在一份声明中表示。“我们的目标应该是让美国的开源模型成为全球最佳。”Eli Tan是时报驻旧金山的科技行业记者。翻译：杜然点击查看本文英文版。