HOW MUCH money should companies lavish(挥霍，大量花费) on artificial intelligence? American technology giants think the answer is: a lot. Their capital spending on data centres may surpass(超过，超越) $740bn this year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, a research firm. Investors, who also used to think that more is more(越多越好), are having second thoughts. When on July 26th it emerged that Nvidia was in talks to underwrite $250bn of a gargantuan $500bn-plus data centre, stuffed full of its chips and run by OpenAI, a leading model-maker, its share price tumbled.(当7月26日有消息称英伟达正在洽谈承销一个巨型数据中心时，其股价暴跌。) Days earlier investors blanch(退缩，变苍白)ed when Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said it would boost its AI spending to $205bn this year. On August 5th SpaceX’s stock took a hit after the rocketry firm announced huge AI investments.
公司应该在人工智能上投入多少钱？美国科技巨头认为答案是：很多。根据研究公司彭博行业研究的预测，他们今年在数据中心上的资本支出可能超过7400亿美元。投资者过去也认为多多益善，但现在开始重新考虑。7月26日，有消息称英伟达正在洽谈承销一个规模超过5000亿美元的巨型数据中心（该中心将装满其芯片，并由领先的模型制造商OpenAI运营）中的2500亿美元，其股价随即下跌。几天前，谷歌母公司Alphabet表示将把今年的人工智能支出提高到2050亿美元，投资者对此感到震惊。8月5日，SpaceX的股价在火箭公司宣布巨额人工智能投资后受到打击。
The American AI splurge(挥霍，大肆花费) looks especially profligate(挥霍的，浪费的) compared with Chinese parsimony(极度节俭，吝啬). In 2026 China’s technology titans are forecast to invest less than a tenth as much(不到十分之一) in data centres as their American counterparts (see chart). All this frugality notwithstanding, their AI models currently appear only fractionally(微小地，极少地) less powerful. K3, an advanced model launched last month by Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based startup, is 95% as clever (on widely used benchmarks) as Fable 5, a frontier model from Anthropic, another top American lab.(K3模型在基准测试中达到了Fable 5的95%水平。) On August 3rd Alibaba, China’s answer to Amazon(中国的亚马逊), released a model which reportedly scored among the world’s best by some measures.
与中国人的节俭相比，美国在人工智能上的挥霍显得尤为浪费。2026年，中国的科技巨头预计在数据中心上的投资还不到美国同行的十分之一（见图表）。尽管如此节俭，他们的人工智能模型目前似乎只逊色一点点。上个月，总部位于北京的初创公司月之暗面推出的先进模型K3，在广泛使用的基准测试中，其聪明程度达到了Anthropic（另一家美国顶级实验室）的前沿模型Fable 5的95%。8月3日，被称为中国亚马逊的阿里巴巴发布了一款模型，据报道在某些指标上跻身世界最佳之列。
The cost of land (for data centres), some equipment (to fill these with AI servers) and labour (from construction workers to AI whizz-kid(神童，奇才)s) is lower in China than in America. Chinese firms are also accused of training their models using the outputs of expensive American ones. Such “distillation(蒸馏，提炼)”, as the process is known, lets China’s AI developers free-ride on(搭便车，占便宜) some of the American spending.
土地（用于数据中心）、一些设备（用于装满AI服务器）和劳动力（从建筑工人到AI奇才）的成本，中国都比美国低。中国企业还被指责利用昂贵的美国模型的输出来训练自己的模型。这种被称为“蒸馏”的过程，让中国的AI开发者搭了美国部分支出的便车。
Let a thousand AIs grow
让千个人工智能生长