From composing lyrics about pandas to creating “the cutest cat in the world,” China’s answer to ChatGPT has just been released.
Main attractions:
- Some Chinese companies get green light to launch ChatGPT-style products
- Experts say the latest wave of developments is fueled by tech nationalism and rivalry with the US
- Beijing is walking the fine line between innovation and regulation as it seeks to become an AI superpower
Ernie Bot, a synthetic artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, is now fully accessible to the public after being approved by the Chinese government last weekend.
Unlike other countries, China requires companies to submit security reviews and receive licenses before mass-marketing AI products.
Authorities recently accelerated efforts to help companies develop AI as the technology increasingly becomes the focus of competition with the United States.
Professor Haiqing Yu, an expert on Chinese digital media at RMIT University, said it was part of a “big step forward” in AI.
But how strong will Ernie be in the area of heavily censored Internet use, and how does this align with China’s vision of becoming the world leader in AI?
What is Ernie?
Ernie, an acronym for Advanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, is an AI chat product of Chinese tech giant Baidu, China’s leading online search service provider.
But it’s not the only one — four AI startups announced similar public launches last week, while TikTok owner ByteDance and Tencent, which owns WeChat, have also received approval from the government to develop AI, Chinese media reported.
Fan Yang, a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Center for Automated Decision Making and Society, said China has invested more efforts and resources in domestic AI, which has led to the introduction of Major e-commerce platforms such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, develop their own models.
“That makes this wave of AI development different from previous waves … supported by American companies, including Google and Microsoft,” she said.
Baidu and others argue that Ernie is for the Chinese in Chinese culture so it will give more accurate or insightful responses, but Dr. Yang said there is still a certain gap between the ability by ChatGPT and Ernie.
“Also, the problem with AI technology is that the more people use it, the more feedback they get, [and] the better they can get.”
Professor Yu said that now that China’s chatbots are open to the public, they will “constantly optimize”, and she added that China’s huge population means there is a huge pool of data. Giant data can be accessed.
But experts highlight another problem for Ernie is China’s great firewall.
‘This topic is forbidden’
The Economist reports that Ernie has some “controversial views on science”, claiming that COVID-19 came from vaping users in the US and was spread to Wuhan by American lobsters.
But he is “quite silent” about questions related to Chinese politics and is often hesitant to ask sensitive questions.
Dr Yang said AI platforms built by China and the US will also tell very different stories around the Russia-Ukraine war.
She pointed out that this is not China’s first foray into the world of AI chatbots.
Xiaoice, a Microsoft by-product, was developed in 2014 and is mainly used for romantic friendships.
Both Xiaoice and another chatbot, BabyQ, appeared to have been taken offline and “renovated” in 2017 after giving politically sensitive answers to questions about the Chinese Communist Party. China (CCP) or Taiwan.
Then, when asked about similar topics, the bots asked to change the subject or evade it by saying they were tired.
Dr. Yang points out that one of the key aspects of China’s interim regulations on AI is content censorship – meaning that companies have to be held accountable as content producers to filter it out. “illegal content”.
She said illegal content is undefined and can be vague, “but most illegal content is the kind of content that is not in line with the national interest of the CCP.”
Furthermore, all content used by Ernie and other Chinese AI chatbots has been subjected to China’s strict censorship regime.
“The content has been moderated, and then they’ll create content that can be further moderated. So that’s where layers of moderation can happen in the process.”
Professor Yu said some colleagues in Beijing had early access to Ernie’s prototype and were curious to find out if it was censored by the state.
“So they intentionally put in so-called sensitive terms and words. And then – of course, that’s entirely to be expected – the chatbot will tell you, ‘This topic is subject to a snooping. banned’ or they try to talk about another topic,” she said.
“The Chinese internet is heavily censored, the content has been cleaned… so the final product itself is understandably cleaned up.
“That’s typical. They’re living in China, people are used to this kind of censorship. And it’s not surprising to them that these chatbots have also been censored.”
Technological Nationalism and the Technological Cold War
China has long set its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.
David Yang, a Harvard economics professor, said Beijing has an advantage thanks to the vast trove of data collected by the state.
“Authoritarian governments want to be able to predict the whereabouts, thoughts and behaviors of their citizens,” he told the Harvard Gazette earlier this year.
“And AI is essentially a technology for prediction.”
Professor Yu refers to the Chinese idiom of “walking on two legs” to describe Beijing’s approach to AI – both encouraging innovation and AI development in order to rush to deploy Chinese models to compete in the world. “Technological Cold War” with the US, and at the same time tightening regulations – especially around content related to domestic politics.
She points out that AI products targeted at businesses don’t need the same government approvals as those intended for content creation and mass use.
Dr. Fan Yang said the real profit of AI for companies like Baidu is not in products intended for the public, but in cooperation with the state – such as AI on surveillance equipment, systems AI-powered speech recognition and AI deployment in military and defense.
The push for a ChatGPT-style platform, she said, is driven by a kind of “technological nationalism”.
Internet users in China were mesmerized by ChatGPT when it first launched, and have found innovative ways to bypass Beijing’s censorship firewall since the OpenAI product was blocked, said Dr. Yang. in China, including through the black market.
Earlier this year, hundreds of people signed an open letter calling for a halt to AI research, fearing an “out of control race” to develop powerful digital minds whose creators could not. controllable – a move backed by some Chinese AI experts.
Professor Yu said China has taken both an ambitious and cautious approach to AI, in what she describes as a “messy contraction” that is all too familiar to the Chinese public.
“They want to balance conflicting requirements for regulation and deregulation,” she said.
“China is one of the first countries in the world to regulate AI and manage algorithms for AI in particular.
“China wants to prove to the world that it is a responsible superpower – not just making money or just controlling people, it wants to present itself as a responsible AI superpower on the global stage. .”
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