AI developers must ‘learn to dance with shackles on’ as China makes new rules in a post-ChatGPT world
- Cyberspace administration releases draft measures for generative AI services as China, and countries around the world, grapple with impact
- With ‘socialist core values’ a focus for Beijing, Tsinghua academic outlines four areas of risk for China: technical; economy; social; and politics
It outlines the first rules in mainland China to require data protection, non-discrimination and the absence of bias, and quality of training data in generative AI products and services – concerns that China shares with governments elsewhere.
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The measures also seek to govern content moderation, security assessment and algorithmic transparency, matters that analysts say are of particular concern to the Chinese government.
While Beijing shows a tone supportive of AI development in the draft rule, political requirements rank highly.
In the first provision of Article 4, which governs content, the draft rule says all services that are “provided to the public in mainland China” should provide content which “embodies socialist core values” and should not contain false information or anything intended for subversion, separatism or dividing territory.
While China has high hopes for AI in its technology competition with the US and America’s allies, analysts say the sector is expected to “dance with shackles on” in coming years as regulators attempt to be agile with regulation to address the challenges of governing AI.
Xue Lan, dean of the Institute for AI International Governance at Tsinghua University, said while the fourth industrial revolution involves various kinds of technologies, the ChatGPT breakthrough meant AI was now seen by people as the leading technology.