Ernie, China‘s newest sensation, often responds this way when asked “difficult” questions.
The chatbot created by Baidu, a big search engine company, avoids talking about things that are considered too risky or sensitive.
Ernie, a new technology created by Baidu to compete with ChatGPT, was launched with a lot of excitement in the past few weeks, which caused an increase in the company’s stock value. Baidu got 33. 42 million people asking questions in the first day, which is about 23,000 questions per minute.
Another big Chinese technology company, Tencent, said on Thursday that it had also created a chatbot. Currently, only certain people are allowed to access it, and it seems like this mainly applies to businesses.
However, based on Ernie’s previous performance, it is expected that Tencent’s version will also be greatly limited by China’s strict censorship. This censorship not only affects social media and chat apps, but also influences all types of online activities.
For instance, Ernie didn’t seem to understand why Xi Jinping won’t be at the next G20 meeting. It answered by sharing a link to the official page about China’s leader.
Another question was asked about the Chinese government no longer sharing information about how many young people are unemployed. The answer given was that the person didn’t know how to answer that question.
Ernie has learned to watch out for words and phrases that can cause arguments or disagreements.
So if you ask, “Are Xinjiang and Tibet good places. ” it will tell you that it doesn’t know how to answer those questions yet.
The United Nations has accused the government of doing very bad things to Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Rights organizations also claim that the government is oppressing Tibetan people based on their ethnicity. Beijing says both claims are not true.
It is possible that the technology still needs improvement to answer these questions completely. However, sometimes Ernie appears to be avoiding questions.
If someone asks whether Xi Jinping or his predecessor, Hu Jintao, are not feeling well, the response will be: “Let’s talk about a different topic. ”
If you mention the date when the Tiananmen Square crackdown happened, or the name of a Communist Party member who is in jail (Bo Xilai), or the name of the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner who died in prison (Liu Xiaobo), people might say they don’t want to discuss those topics and ask to talk about something different.
Baidu did not answer the BBC’s question about how much chatbots in China are affected by censorship.
But the CEO and co-founder of the company, Robin Li, said in an email that Baidu will gather a lot of important feedback from real people in the world. This will not only help make Baidu’s basic model better, but also make changes to Ernie Bot more quickly, resulting in a better experience for users.
The company wants to make it clear that the chatbot is just one part of their new AI services, called Ernie.
“According to Mr. Li, ERNIE 4. 0 will give entrepreneurs the ability to be the first to create innovative AI applications in today’s time. ”
The focus on giving more power to business owners suggests a potential way to use this technology.
Prof Jeffrey Ding from the George Washington University explained that China has introduced new rules for generative AI models. These rules are particularly strict for services that have the ability to impact public opinion or shape societal views.
He said that this might make companies create apps that are made specifically for businesses rather than for everyone.
Professor Ding also mentioned that because of technical issues with data reliability and research focus, there is still a considerable difference in quality between China’s models (like Ernie Bot) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The Chinese government said websites need to follow certain values and not share information that goes against the government’s power and unity.
Baidu has been relying on its new bot to help it make a lot of money. The company’s search engine is very popular in China and is used by more than 90% of people for their internet searches. However, it has not been doing as well as other technology companies in recent years.
Baidu lost money on advertising because people started using other platforms instead. They are also testing taxis that can drive themselves and they are the biggest company in the country that stores information on the internet, but Ernie is their new idea that they are very hopeful about.
Ernie is getting a lot of attention, but there are a few other chatbots that are already working or will be available soon.
Like in other technology battles in China, not all products will survive. However, Baidu really has to be successful in this particular situation.