March 03, 2023
China’s Censors Are Afraid of What Chatbots Might Say
ChatGPT has made quite the stir in China: virtually every major tech company is keen on developing its own artificial intelligence chatbot. Baidu has announced plans to release its own strain sometime next month. This newfound obsession is in line with paramount Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s strategic prioritization of AI development—dating back to at least 2017—in China’s race to become the world’s dominant AI player and ultimately a “science and technology superpower.” And while the development of large language model (LLM) bots such as ChatGPT is just one facet of the future of AI, LLMs will, as one leading AI scientist recently put it, “define artificial intelligence.” Indeed, the sudden popularity of ChatGPT has at Google “upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses”—a clarion indicator of the arguably outsized importance of LLMs.
Xi would have to make a hard choice between staying competitive in the tech race and mitigating short-term unrest.
Yet, China’s aspirations to become a world-leading AI superpower are fast approaching a head-on collision with none other than its own censorship regime. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prioritizes controlling the information space over innovation and creativity, human or otherwise. That may dramatically hinder the development and rollout of LLMs, leaving China to find itself a pace behind the West in the AI race.
Read the full article from Foreign Policy.
More from CNAS
-
Video
Technology & National Security
The Geopolitics of 6G with Vivek Chilukuri, Michael Calabrese, and Lindsay GormanVivek Chilukuri, senior fellow and program director at the Center for a New American Security, joined POLITICO Policy Outlook to discuss the geopolitical implications of 6G, t...
By Vivek Chilukuri
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Two Illegal Biolabs Reveal Gaps in U.S. BiosecurityThis article was originally published on Lawfare.Last month, law enforcement officials launched an investigation into a suspected biolab in the Las Vegas home of Chinese natio...
By Sam Howell
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | America’s AI Cyber Defense Gap Needs Congress to ActTwice in the past five months, the U.S. Congress has allowed the authorization for U.S. cyber threat intelligence sharing to lapse. In each case, it managed only short-term ex...
By Spencer Michaels, Janet Egan & Michael Daniel
-
Podcast
Technology & National Security
War Is Deadly. Why Is Trump Turning It into a Meme?Israel says it killed two of Iran’s highest-ranking leaders in an airstrike on Monday night. And President Trump is bashing allies for declining to help secure the Strait of H...
By Paul Scharre
