Alibaba and Huawei set to debut generative AI chatbots

Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Huawei are reportedly ready to satisfy local demand for generative AI chatbots in coming weeks.

Since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Chinese users have been eager to get their hands on the technology. Cities like Beijing have pledged to assist developers, while academia and private industry alike have made progress.

A university-developed ChatGPT analog crashed within a mere four hours under the weight of a crushing traffic surge. Meanwhile, private industry versions like Baidu's ERNIE have had their own troubles – including managing censorship and botching some requests.

Alibaba was reported by Chinese media IT Home to be launching a large-scale model on April 11 during its 2023 Cloud Summit in Beijing.

Alibaba and Huawei set to debut generative AI chatbots

There are a number of ways to digest this bit of news regarding Chatbots and China.

Ultimately this particular report says much. But doesn't quite get to the point of some of my observations about the topic. But question arise in my mind nevertheless, that I wondered if our members can speak to.

First off, with the recent effort put forth by some talking heads and celebrities to raise a cautionary alarm in the industry, isn't it odd that China would be entertaining 'deployment' of a large-scale bot for their collective use? Should we simply accept that 'it's OK because it's not GPT5 (the presumptive AI "boogeyman.") Or aren't we inclined to sense 'risk' as China pursues its own agenda with a technology that some, at least, are fearful of its evolution.

Secondly, In what way are 'businesses' of "Chatbots" 'competing' with one another? What will isolate one chatbot from another in a virtual world? The cross-pollination of ideas was problematic enough for a some human societies to cope with. But instantaneous logic powered by whatever embedded biases inserted by the programmers (knowingly or not) makes for some dangerous possibilities, perhaps.

Thirdly, Even China's government cannot deny its own unquestionably active role in "controlling" information dissemination, and even more would describe it as draconian compared to themselves. Chatbots are now going to be an agency of this doctrine? Is that not an inevitability? There are some issues that would necessarily make Chinese chatbots different if so, no?

At any rate, if you are interested in this at the industrial and architectural elements at play, rather than the ... ahem ... sociological... They apparently plan to discuss this ...

Huawei's chief AI scientist, Qi Tian, is scheduled to introduce "The Progress and Application of Pangu Large Scale Models" on April 8 at the AI Large-Scale Model Technology Summit held in Hangzhou. Pangu has been in development since at least 2020 and the model was released [VIDEO] in April 2021.

Something tells me none of my comments will be affected by anything they'll say there... but hey, I'm allowed to be cynical from time to time.

Will it be a chatbot hyper focused on Mao’s Little Red Book for guidance or a wish.com sort of AI?

a reply to: Ahabstar

I think it might be, at the very least, like the computer supervillain from the original Tron movie. End of line.