The Chinese government recently released a draft of “Measures to regulate generative AI,” which restricts the content and development of Chinese AI. Analysts see this as a deliberate act of censorship, as it will impose limitations on Chinese ChatGPT in the worldwide AI competition. As per the draft, the production of content must abide by socialist core values, and fails to do so will incur serious fines and criminal investigations.
The regulations also highlighted the banning of “fraudulent information” which refers to information that does not conform to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Furthermore, developers are expected to filter out and optimize their algorithms to prevent generating controversial content within three months.
Hsiu-Wen Wang, an assistant researcher at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, believes that these measures may eventually reduce the intelligence of Chinese AI as it will be prevented from providing comprehensive answers. Jung-Chin Shen, an assistant professor at the School of Administrative Studies of Atkinson Faculty at York University in Toronto, confirmed Wang’s suspicions, noting the regime’s censorship aims at controlling people’s ideology.
The US has even given a ban on exporting top computing chips for artificial intelligence work to China, including Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks. Shen commented that Chinese Chatbot is two or three years behind the US in terms of replies and general functionality. Wang expressed her concern about the potential duplication of the Chatbot into two separate versions, similar to Douyin and TikTok for the Chinese market and the international market.
The US export ban and government censorship has made it almost impossible for China to advance their AI, leading analysts to state that China’s plans of becoming the world’s primary AI innovation center by 2030 may have to be put on hold. With this, it can be concluded that global competition in the AI industry will be more difficult for China in the foreseeable future.
Mary Hong has been a journalist with The Epoch Times since 2020, where she reports on various Chinese human rights issues and politics. She is also a renowned commentator on issues concerning Chinese society.
