Microsoft China executive warns of wasteful ChatGPT-like investments amid ‘fanatical’ interest in the technology
- A strategy of ‘burning money to hire thousands, or tens of thousands’ of people to throw at the problem may not work, according to Wei Qing
- Wei’s views echo those of Charles Zhang, founder and CEO of news portal Sohu.com, who said ChatGPT has been in development for years
A senior executive at Microsoft China has warned that the country’s “fanaticism” over ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to hasty investments, resulting in losses of capital, time and talent.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s conversational bot ChatGPT spurred a frenzy of interest when it was launched last November, with tech companies in China particularly keen to catch up in the field. However, Wei Qing, chief technology officer at Microsoft China, said that ChatGPT was the culmination of long-term research and could not be replicated by splashing out cash.
“Most people only saw the meteoric and exponential growth of [ChatGPT], and we might think this is how [products] should grow,” he said in a speech at an AI-themed conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
OpenAI has invested many years of effort to bring the technology to market, yet people only see the “tip of the iceberg” and not everything “under the water”, Wei added.
A strategy of “burning money to hire thousands, or tens of thousands” of people to throw at the problem may not work, Wei said.
Wei did not name any Chinese companies in his speech. ChatGPT, which is not available in China and is unlikely to be approved for use given Beijing’s intolerance of uncensored information, has prompted a number of China Big Tech firms and start-ups to launch their own versions of the AI chatbot.