China’s ‘two sessions’ 2023: ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence is ‘difficult to achieve’, China’s tech minister says

Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang raised ethical concerns and said the country must ‘wait and see’ when it comes to catching up with ChatGPT

The hit chatbot from OpenAI has become a hot topic in China, but domestic tech giants must overcome censorship and chip restrictions to create rival products

Reading Time:2 minutes

A keyboard is seen reflected on a computer screen displaying the website of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot from OpenAI, in this illustration picture taken February 8, 2023. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:00pm, 5 Mar 2023

China has some work to do in catching up to the hit artificial intelligence product ChatGPT, developed by San Francisco-based start-up OpenAI, the head of the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology said, as technological self-reliance remains a top priority for the central government amid heated trade tensions with the US.

ChatGPT has advantages in delivering results in real time, which is “very difficult to achieve”, Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang said at a press conference on the first day of the annual National People’s Congress (NPC) on Sunday.

China over the years has done a lot of planning and research in the fields of natural language processing and natural-language understanding, and has made some achievements, according to Wang. But for China to achieve the kind of results seen by OpenAI, the country needs to “wait and see”, he said.

Wang also raised the issue of AI ethics on Sunday, saying companies need to be mindful of such concerns.

The large language models that produce sophisticated bots like ChatGPT can result in unpredictable, and often inaccurate, responses. Questions have been raised about whether China’s tight internet censorship could allow for the development of a product like ChatGPT.

The explosive popularity of ChatGPT since it was launched in November has pushed generative AI into the global spotlight, spurring many conversations in China about the direction of the domestic industry.

The chatbot is a topic of discussion at this year’s “two sessions”, the country’s largest annual political gathering, where the NPC and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) unveil national policy plans for the coming year.

Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang gives an interview after the opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing on March 5, 2023. Photo: Xinhua