Of the many events that stand out as noteworthy in online discussions across Chinese social media in 2023, it’s perhaps the rise of ChatGPT that will prove to be the most significant. Although the chatbot made by the US-based OpenAI was officially launched in late 2022, it took until 2023 for its unprecedented growth to raise eyebrows in China, where the government has set the goal of becoming the global AI leader by 2030. Over the past decade, the focus on AI in Chinese society and digital culture has grown. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, AI implementations in schools, office buildings and factories have rolled out in fast forward. AI facial recognition is employed in everything from public security to payment technology; smart glasses and helmets make it easier for many workers to perform their tasks; and intelligent robots have become a common sight in China’s service industry, in malls, restaurants, and banks. There seemed little doubt over who would win the tech race between the eagle and the dragon; but then came ChatGPT. It took months for China to launch its own alternative, models that seemed to lag behind their western variants in multiple ways. Even the minister of science and technology acknowledged that China’s chatbots were struggling against their US competition and Chinese internet users were left asking why – given that China was meant to dominate the AI era. Experts and bloggers proposed different answers: some suggested China was not the first to launch a ChatGPT-like product because tech startups in China tend to focus on fast applications rather than lengthy research and development. Others said that language model training in China was harder due to the rich and complex nature of the language.
Full opinion : AI War between China and the US is getting more and more interesting.
