China’s ChatGPT quandary the result of a lack of vision and fundamental research, say researchers

A lack of visionary leaders and funding contributed to China falling behind in large language models, according to a Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher

The question of why a Chinese company has not produced something like ChatGPT has plagued the domestic AI industry since the hit chatbot was released last year

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The overnight success of ChatGPT has left many in China wondering why the domestic artificial intelligence industry did not beat OpenAI to the punch. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:29pm, 6 Apr 2023Updated: 6:28pm, 7 Apr 2023

A researcher at one of China’s top scientific institutes has suggested a lack of vision may have contributed to China falling behind in ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence (AI). The verdict comes as questions abound about why the country appeared to be caught off guard by developments in large language models that turned the chatbot from San Francisco-based start-up OpenAI into a global sensation and ignited intense competition around the technology.

“The reasons are aplenty, from the need for visionary leaders, top-notch teams and sizeable funding,” Bao Yungang, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), wrote on microblogging platform Weibo. He also highlighted OpenAI’s shift in 2019 from a non-profit company to one with profit capped at 100 times investments as a major contributor to its success.

The overnight success of ChatGPT has spurred soul-searching in China, which has been a leader in some areas of AI but fallen behind in language models capable of answering complex queries and producing myriad types of content. Bao said that similar questions about falling behind could be asked of leading research schools in the US like Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher Bao Yungang. Photo: Handout

China has other challenges, though. One is an unwillingness to invest in fundamental research, according to Liang Zheng, deputy head at the Tsinghua University’s China tech policy research centre.

“So far there is literally no Chinese company investing heavily in fundamental research. No one is doing the step from 0 to 1,” Liang told the local newspaper Economic Observer last month. China needs to “take some time to cultivate a new market environment supportive of innovation, encouraging those with a long-term mindset to work on fundamental and explorative work, which could eventually lead to something meaningful”, he added.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November, many Big Tech firms have rushed to put out or show progress in developing their own similar products. In Silicon Valley, Google rushed out a preview of its AI-powered chatbot Bard, receiving a cool response.

A number of tech giants in China have come out publicly as working on ChatGPT-like services. The biggest contender is Baidu, which released its Ernie Bot last month.

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