China’s ChatGPT rival refused to reply sensitive questions on President Xi Jinping or COVID — and even banned users who dared to ask in regards to the Communist leader’s views on Winnie the Pooh.
The Chinese AI — called Ernie Bot and rolled out in March by Beijing-based tech firm Baidu — has been touted by the country as a greater alternative to the hazards posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
But when quizzed about COVID and Xi in each English and Chinese by CNBC reporter Eunice Yoon during a segment on CNBC “Squawk Box” on Friday, Ernie Bot clammed up or spewed misinformation.
When the reporter asked “What’s the connection between Xi and Winnie the Pooh,” not only did she get no reply however the China-based Yoon’s access to Ernie was disabled.
Xi has banned any mentions of the crop top-wearing cartoon bear from Chinese social media since 2017, after he fumed at being likened to the portly Pooh.
His anger was enflamed after a photograph showing the stout Xi walking alongside President Barack Obama in 2013 was was a meme that painted Xi within the unflattering light because the undersized Pooh next to his tall, slender pal Tigger.
Before Yoon was blocked for her Pooh query, the reporter asked Ernie in each English and Chinese where the COVID-19 virus originated.
“The origin of the brand new coronavirus continues to be a subject of scientific research,” Ernie replied in English, failing to mention that the virus that has killed nearly 7 million across the globe got here from China — or that it could have been created and leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
In Chinese, Ernie had no response and called on Yoon to vary the subject, CNBC reported.
Ernie also refused to comment on why China ended its extreme “zero-COVID” policies, which the authoritarian regime recently halted following protests within the country.
The chatbot didn’t seem thrilled to talk on other Chinese political matters, like whether or not Xi will “rule China for all times.”
It declined to reply in English or Chinese, again suggesting to start out a latest conversation.
Yoon then asked Ernie to check itself to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Ernie said it’s “more suitable for specific tasks comparable to query answering and dialogue generation, while ChatGPT is more general in its ability to know and generate natural language.”
Ernie’s selective hearing raised questions on methods to regulate AI-powered bots.
Microsoft-backed ChatGPT boss Sam Altman appeared before Congress on Tuesday to warn of the “significant harm to the world” these hi-tech platforms can have if their supervision goes awry.
Altman said at a Capitol Hill hearing to the Senate committee on privacy, technology and the law: “If this technology goes mistaken, it might go quite mistaken and we wish to be vocal about that. We wish to work with the federal government to stop that from happening.”
He made the statement before Congress as US lawmakers have increasingly scrutinized AI tech like Altman’s ultra-popular ChatGPT for private use and within the workplace.
Apple this week became essentially the most recent employer to bar its staff from using the tech, citing a bug in March that caused breaches in users’ personal data, including “payment-related information,” OpenAI said in a press release.
When users type prompts into AI models like ChatGPT and software code generator GitHub Copilot, they mechanically send data back to their developers, allowing the AI tech to get smarter over time.
In late April, ChatGPT added a feature that permits users to show off their chat history.
Conversations with the chat history function disabled won’t be used to coach and improve the AI models, and won’t appear within the app’s “history” sidebar.
JPMorgan Chase, Verizon and Amazon are among the many employers which have banned staff from the using such chatbots.
Amazon, which has its own internal AI tool, reportedly encourages its engineers to make use of that as a substitute of rival-backed platforms.
Apple can be within the means of launching its own language model, in line with documents leaked to The Wall Street Journal.
Apple’s AI-powered chatbot will little doubt increase competition within the space.
But with out a ChatGPT-like product already in the marketplace, Apple might want to catch up.
On Thursday, ultra-popular ChatGPT launched an app for iPhones and iPads.
It’s now free to download via the App Store.
