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As ChatGPT unveils latest model, Chinese AI developers worry about keeping up

  • The new version, called GPT-4, scores better than 90 per cent of humans on a bar exam and the SAT university entrance exam
  • Observers say China risks falling behind in ‘winner-takes-all’ tech race

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OpenAI released its GPT-3 model in 2020, but it did not receive much attention until ChatGPT went viral late last year. Photo: Reuters
Zhang Tongin Beijing

OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT on Wednesday that has left the older model in the dust and the Chinese AI community more worried than ever.

The new AI model, called GPT-4, surpassed the vast majority of humans on several difficult tests and tasks.

For example, it scored better than 90 per cent of human test takers on a simulated bar exam, compared with the previous GPT-3.5 version, which scored in the bottom 10 per cent.

GPT-4 also scored 710 points on the reading and writing section and 700 points on the mathematics section of the SAT, putting it in the 96th percentile among 1.7 million US students taking the university entrance exam.

“The super long acknowledgement list in the GPT-4 technical report seems to tell us that this is the achievement of an ‘army’ after several years of hard work with leaders that know how to dream,” said Zhao Junbo, a professor at Zhejiang University.

“[Chinese developers] may have significant gaps in engineering and hardware compared with OpenAI.”

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