Artificial AI becomes the next focus of the US tech war

Baidu, China's leading search giant, says its latest AI chatbot has surpassed OpenAI's ChatGPT on several key parameters.

In a statement released on June 27, Baidu said that Ernie 3.5, the company's latest AI chatbot version, has surpassed "ChatGPT in overall capability" and outperformed "GPT-4 in several specific capabilities."

To support its findings, the Beijing-based company cited test results conducted by China Science Daily, which used datasets such as AGIEval and C-Eval to evaluate the performance of artificial intelligence models.

Baidu is the first Chinese technology company to launch an AI chatbot to compete with ChatGPT.

Baidu's move comes as the AI craze, initiated by ChatGPT, has spread to mainland China, prompting numerous companies there to launch competing products.

Baidu is the first major Chinese tech company to launch an AI product to compete with OpenAI's chatbot, using its Ernie Bot AI language model, released in March. This chatbot is developed based on the older Ernie 3.0 model and has been undergoing limited testing with invited users for the past three months.

Meanwhile, other Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent have already revealed their respective AI models.

Baidu stated that their new model offers improved inference and training efficiency, enabling chatbots to become a faster and more cost-effective solution for repetitive tasks in the future. Additionally, Ernie 3.5 supports third-party plugin development.

"Plug-ins" are additional applications that allow AI models to function in specific situations, such as summarizing long texts and generating more accurate responses. ChatGPT officially added support for this feature in March.

A new "front" in the US-China competition.

Paul Triolo, director of technology policy consulting at Albright Stonebridge, said that Washington is likely to step up its targeting of certain types of applications in China and "artificial AI could be drawn into the fray next year."

Artificial intelligence is becoming a "craze" in the technology world.

This comes as the Biden administration “works to identify which technologies could contribute to the modernization of China’s military, as well as factors that could boost the ability of mainland companies to create breakthroughs in AI.”

AI needs to be trained with massive amounts of data to function. This process requires a large amount of computing power, provided by specialized semiconductor chips, such as those sold by Nvidia, the leading AI chip manufacturer on the market today.

To date, the U.S. has imposed a number of restrictions aimed at isolating China from Nvidia's key processors, a move that could hinder Beijing's AI development. In addition, Washington is conducting a review of overseas investment, which could lead to new rules for American companies wishing to do business abroad.

“The upcoming executive order assessing the state of foreign investment will include restrictions on AI technology, a key indicator of trends in the final two years of the Biden administration,” said Paul Triolo.

Meanwhile, China views AI development as a strategic priority, alongside imposing regulations that force this technology to adhere to Beijing's strict internet rules. Even if the US seeks to isolate China from crucial AI chip supplies, the country can still develop its own semiconductor chips.

(According to CNBC, Reuters)

Source