China’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is trained on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) doctrine, in a stark reminder of the ideological parameters that Chinese AI models should abide by.
China’s cyberspace academy earlier this week announced the chatbot trained on “Xi Jinping Thought,” a doctrine that promotes “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The chatbot was trained on seven databases, six of which were mostly related to information technologies provided by China’s Internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC.
Photo: AP
Xi Jinping Thought was the seventh database that the chatbot was trained on, according to a WeChat messaging service post by CAC’s magazine about the AI model.
The Xi-trained large-language model is the latest effort by authorities to spread the Chinese leader’s ideology and ideas. Students have had to take classes on Xi Jinping Thought in schools, and an app called Study Xi Strong Nation was rolled out in 2019 to allow users to learn and take quizzes about his ideologies.
Xi Jinping Thought — also known as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” — is made up of 14 principles, including ensuring the absolute power of the Chinese Communist Party, strengthening national security and socialist values, as well as improving people’s livelihoods and well-being.
The chatbot was created primarily to demonstrate the development and practical applications in cybersecurity and IT research, said the China Institute of Cybersecurity Affairs, which had launched the AI model for internal use.
The AI model would be able to generate report outlines on topics such as AI development and productivity, the CAC magazine’s WeChat post said.
“Users can choose different categories of knowledge bases for intelligent question and answer. The professionalism and authority of the corpus ensure the professionalism of the generated content,” the post said.
The AI model would also be able to create reports, summarize information and provide translations in Chinese or English for users who have access to it.
However, it is not clear if the Xi-trained chatbot is meant for public use.
The unveiling of the chatbot comes as the US and China are locked in a race for AI supremacy.
Although San Francisco-based OpenAI’s generative AI model ChatGPT has been widely credited as one of the most important developments in the field, China also has ambitions to become the global leader in AI by 2030.
Technology firms such as Alibaba and Baidu have already rolled out primarily Chinese-language AI models similar to ChatGPT for public and commercial use.
However, these AI models tend to be more restricted as they have to abide by China’s strict censorship rules. Chinese AI models often do not answer any politically sensitive questions posed to them.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS