China’s Big Tech firms are working hard to deploy a clone of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, but local experts warn of some hurdles that must be overcome before the technology can be fully adopted. Commanding the computing power needed alone could come at a price tag of billions of Chinese yuan, while experts caution that compliance issues and computing power limits could challenge content providers.
Xiao Xiupeng, a vice president at Nasdaq-listed Chinese AI firm Xiao-i, highlighted the obstacles that await the advancing technology at the Shanghai AI Conference held earlier this month. He stressed that the training of the large language models (LLM) used for ChatGPT carries significant costs and cautioned against the potential difficulties with data compliance, costs and computing power.
Though the development of ChatGPT-like services may face hurdles and costs, Xiao sees opportunities in the industry turning the large language models into tailored services in finance, government and energy sectors.
Investor Xie Xuzhang from Lighthouse Capital had similar thoughts in February this year, noting that Chinese tech companies have the capability to create great products out of innovations from other markets.
Tencent Cloud’s industrial ecosystem arm General Manager Cao Yan agrees, asserting that many small Chinese companies need to build symbiotic ecosystems of smaller AI models, leveraging the power of the larger models, in order to achieve their goals.
The promise of artificial intelligence in China has been welcomed in the manufacturing sector. Zhang Chengyu, the general secretary of a Yangtze Delta region digitalisation think tank, gave a speech at the Shanghai AI forum showing that AI has a great role to play in the digital transformation of supply chains, quality control and cost management.
Organisations have much to gain from the potential of AI-based technology and ChatGPT, yet it remains uncertain how far these tools can be pushed before restrictions, costs and compliance challenges create an insurmountable barrier.
Company: Baidu, Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are all leading Chinese technology companies which are at the forefront of the development of chatbot technology, such as ChatGPT, with the launch of Tongyi Qianwen and Ernie Bot respectively.
Person: Xiao Xiupeng is a vice president of Xiao-i, a Nasdaq-listed Chinese AI firm. He has cautioned that content compliance and computing power limits could be a challenge in introducing ChatGPT like services in China.
