Robin Li, the founder of Baidu, demonstrated the “Ernie” chatbot, which he claimed could understand human intentions and provide responses that were nearly human-level.
The world was introduced to AI Ernie Chatbot by Chinese tech giant Baidu a few days after popular artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, released its most recent version, GPT4. Baidu is best known in China for its search engine and map services.
In a prerecorded video presentation, Robin Li, the well-known founder of Baidu, demonstrated the “Ernie” chatbot, which he claimed could understand human intentions and provide responses that were nearly human-level.
Although the service hasn’t yet been made available to the public for testing, the event listed features that overlap with ChatGPT’s functionality, like understanding Chinese, producing writing, and performing mathematical calculations.
While there were some highlights during the presentation, like the display of a poster that Ernie is alleged to have created from text descriptions, investors didn’t seem particularly impressed with the prerecorded launch in general.
During the unveiling, the price of Baidu’s stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange dropped by as much as 10%, but it recovered those losses in Friday trading.
In Beijing, China n March 16, 2023, Robin Li, the chairman and CEO of Baidu Inc., makes an appearance at a launch event for the company’s Ernie chatbot. On March 16, 2023, in Beijing, China, Robin Li, the chairman and CEO of Baidu Inc., makes an appearance at a launch event for the company’s Ernie chatbot.
According to the Reuters news agency, only a small number of people were given access codes to try the Ernie software after its launch on Thursday. These individuals quickly took to social media to share their opinions, including some side-by-side comparisons with chatbots developed in the United States, like Microsoft’s Bing, which employs ChatGPT technology.
One user noted that Ernie had been able to provide an “O.K.” response to a question about a philosopher, for example, on China’s Twitter-like social media site Weibo, but they also noted that there was “a definite gap between Ernie bot and Bing.”
The reviewer, a tech blogger with more than 2.4 million followers on Wiebo who goes by the name Chapingjun, was quoted by Reuters as saying that the functional gap was “not insanely big” and that “in certain questions (Ernie) even performed better than Bing.”
Despite the lacklustre launch, Ernie is likely to outsell American-made products on its home market because of both Western sanctions and China’s own desire for technological independence.
A revamp of China’s science and technology ministry was announced at the annual meeting of the Chinese legislature, which ended on Monday. The stated goal of the revamp is to pursue “self-reliance” in the face of growing U.S. restrictions on the sale of advanced processing chips and manufacturing equipment to China.