Kevin Kelly said China could hold an advantage in AI if token costs become a core competitive factor and open-source models remain available. Speaking on July 18 at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the futurist said token consumption costs are becoming more important, even if the market does not appear to care much about them yet. In his view, that could change once people are constantly consuming large volumes of tokens in everyday use. Kelly added that a model priced at one-tenth the cost of Anthropic could upend the market. He also warned that open-source development still needs substantial financial backing to keep operating, because it does not generate profits as easily as closed-source models. He said building large AI models requires massive amounts of capital. The remarks were reported by The Paper and carried by Odaily.
Kevin Kelly said open-source AI models could become a major advantage for China if token costs eventually emerge as a critical factor in the market.
Speaking to media on July 18 at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Kelly said the cost of token consumption is becoming increasingly important, even though people do not seem to care much about it for now.
"But I think when we are consuming such enormous amounts of tokens all the time, people will start to care about the cost," Kelly said. "If you can offer it at one-tenth the cost of Anthropic, that would overturn the situation."
He also cautioned that the open-source model needs enough funding to keep running, since it is not as profitable as the closed-source approach. "Building these large models requires enormous funding," he said.
The remarks were reported by The Paper and published by Odaily.
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