HONG KONG (AP) — China’s latest artificial intelligence chatbot is trained according to President Xi Jinping’s doctrine, in a clear reminder of the ideological parameters that Chinese AI models must respect.
China’s cyberspace academy announced earlier this week the chatbot trained in Xi Jinping Thought, a doctrine that promotes “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
The chatbot was trained on seven databases, six of which were mainly related to information technologies provided by China’s Internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC.
Xi Jinping Thought was the seventh database the chatbot was trained on, according to a post by CAC magazine’s WeChat messaging service about the AI model.
The great linguistic model trained by Xi is the authorities’ latest effort to spread the Chinese leader’s ideology and ideas. Students had to take classes on Xi Jinping Thought in schools, and an app called Study Xi Strong Nation was also launched 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 primarily created to demonstrate development and practical applications in cybersecurity and IT research, according to the Chinese Institute of Cybersecurity Affairs, which released the AI model for internal use.
The AI model would be able to generate draft reports on topics such as AI development and productivity, according to CAC magazine’s WeChat post.
“Users can choose different categories of knowledge bases for smart questions and answers. The professionalism and authority of the corpus guarantee the professionalism of the content generated”, said the post.
The AI model will also be able to create reports, summarize information, and provide Chinese or English translations for users who have access to it.
However, it is unclear whether the chatbot trained by Xi will be intended for public use.
The chatbot’s unveiling comes at a time when the US and China are in a race for AI supremacy.
While San Francisco-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI model 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.
China’s access to a population of 1.4 billion also allows the country to accumulate vast amounts of data to train facial recognition and autonomous driving systems.
Tech companies like Alibaba and Baidu have already launched mostly 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 comply with China’s strict censorship rules. This means that Chinese AI models often do not answer any politically sensitive questions put to them.
