Kevin Kelly: If the cost of tokens is crucial in the future, the Chinese open-source model has a clear advantage.

On July 18th, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, renowned futurist and "father of Silicon Valley spirit" Kevin Kelly stated in an interview with the media that if one day everyone starts to care about Token costs, having open source models would be an advantage for Chinese AI. Kevin Kelly believes that China's open source model is a great initiative, "I am happy to see China moving in this direction." Kelly mentioned that Token cost consumption is becoming increasingly important, but currently it seems that people are not paying attention to costs, "but I think that when we are constantly consuming such a huge amount of Tokens, people will start to care, if you can provide costs that are only one-tenth of Anthropic's, then the situation will be overturned." However, Kevin Kelly also pointed out that the open source model requires enough funds to maintain operations, because it does not make as much money as closed source models, "building these large models requires a huge amount of funding." "I don't know if people care about costs now... If people are not willing to pay more, then Token cost becomes very crucial, and because China has open source models, much of it will flow to China," said Kevin Kelly.