Chinese Internet giant Baidu unveiled “Ernie Bot” in Beijing last week, a response to the American chatbot ChatGPT, whose business in China has been protected despite being blocked.
ChatGPT, introduced in November by the Californian startup OpenAI, can provide answers in a wide range of areas, writing projects or in the second event to create visible content through artificial intelligence.
In China, it cannot be accessed without a VPN program, which allows you to hide the location from which the user connects.
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Another to ChatGPT
It is one of the first Chinese companies to offer a website equivalent to the popular American chatbot. However, Ernie Bot’s presentation to the press last Thursday was limited to presenting pre-recorded images and a simple algebraic equation.
The challenge for developers, on the other hand, is to create a chatbot that works well, but doesn’t deviate from a strict framework of permitted content.
For example, when a chatbot created by Beijing’s Tsinghua University is asked if Chinese President Xi Jinping is a good leader, it asks another question.
repercussions
After the introduction of this tool, Baidu’s shares lost almost 10%, before recovering the next day on positive reviews from a small part of users and analysts.
“Content regulation and censorship are clear hurdles in China,” says Lauren Hurcombe, technology specialist at law firm DLA Piper.
As a result, Chinese companies have “far less data” than their Western competitors to plan their power and systems, Hurcombe explains.
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Artificial intelligence
The country wants to become a world leader by 2030, which would revolutionize many sectors, such as automotive industry or medicine.
But “no more access” to the most powerful chips, advises Lawrence Hurcombe, who has a question about the ability of the Chinese to find something equally powerful.
Steven Miller, professor emeritus of information systems at the management university of Singapore, notes: “In 2016, China has already built the world’s supercomputers using its own type of chips.”
“If it’s been that way for seven years, there’s certainly more opportunity today to design chips,” explains Miller.
