China’s tech giants are facing significant hurdles in their race to develop and dominate the artificial intelligence (AI) market, with censorship and a US clampdown on chip imports impeding progress.

Last week, Baidu, one of China’s leading search engines, unveiled its chatbot, Ernie Bot, but the demonstration fell short of expectations, leaving the firm’s shares down by 10%. The company’s AI ambitions have been hampered by censorship, which requires Baidu to limit the scope of its chatbot’s capabilities to avoid politically and factually incorrect answers.

This comes as Chinese tech firms including Alibaba, JD.com, Netease, and Bytedance’s TikTok are rushing to develop AI services that can replicate human speech. The competition was sparked by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November, which caused a frenzy in the Chinese market.

However, China’s tech ecosystem faces challenges that could hinder its progress in the AI market. The lack of funding for open-ended research with no clear path to profitability is a key issue, according to Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Meanwhile, the US has imposed a squeeze on chip imports, which could hamper Chinese tech firms’ ability to develop AI technologies. This comes as Google announced the launch of its AI chatbot, Bard, and invited people in the US and the UK to test it, as the company seeks to catch up with OpenAI in the race for AI dominance.

Despite the challenges facing Chinese tech firms, brokerages such as Citigroup have given positive reviews of Ernie Bot, and the firms’ shares rallied the day after the lackluster unveiling. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether Chinese tech giants will be able to keep pace with their international rivals in the rapidly evolving AI market.

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(Via)

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Back in September 2021, Lithuania had accused Xiaomi of selling their smartphones with supposed codes that would allow the company to censor certain terms. The brand has since denied this accusation, and now, another agency has backed up its claim.

For those unaware, we had previously reported on the Chinese tech giant facing allegations in the country, with the government asking users to throw away their smartphones from Chinese brands. Apparently, smartphones from Xiaomi could detect certain terms and censor them. To dispute this, the company had even hired a third party cyber security expert as well.

And now, a German IT watchdog group had also begun its own investigation into the matter. This group found no evidence of Xiaomi adding censorship tools to its phones. The IT group added that “As a result, [we were] unable to identify any anomalies that would require further investigation or other measures” (Via Reuters). In other words, it is clear that there is no evidence that would back up the accusations from the Lithuanian government.

It was claimed that using terms like “free Tibet,” “long live Taiwan independence,” and “democracy movement” were sensitive terms to some Chinese citizens, and the brand added software to identify and censor them. It remains to be seen how Lithuania responds to this report. But, it is still a win for the smartphone brand that received a hit in the region. Unfortunately, Xiaomi hasn’t responded to this news either, but stay tuned for more updates.

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The popular social media app, TikTok, is pulling its service out of Hong Kong. The news arrives after the region adopted new national security laws that grow the Mainland Chinese government’s powers.

According to a spokesperson, “In light of recent events, we’ve decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong.” For those unaware, Hong Kong has recently adopted China’s Draconian regulations which have often been criticized for its censorship standards. Thus, global tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have already stopped processing requests for users’ data from the local government.

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TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is a Chinese firm that has been struggling to differentiate its extremely successful western application from its parent company and Douyin (the Chinese version of the social video app). It has faced various criticism regarding its handling of information, and we had even reported on a claim of its harvesting user data.

TikTok has always denied sharing any of its information with the Chinese government. Although now, the new security laws in Hong Kong might undermine this position as it would require companies to hand over various forms of data to the government. Notably, the US is considering a ban on TikTok and other Chinese applications, with India already banning the social media platform along with 58 other apps from China.

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(Via,Source)

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China is now set to enforce a new law which would make it compulsory for internet users posting comments on any blog or platform to show their real identities. The new law will become effective from October 1st and would require tech firms to take down the identities of every one that is posting a comment on internet message boards they control. The Chinese government explains that the new measure is a to discourage “false rumors, filthy language, and illegal messages.”  

This isn’t coming as a surprise as it is just the latest in a series of clampdown which the government has continued to institute, with an increased intensity in the past few months. It is viewed as yet another censorship of the internet which is aimed at curtailing free speech. Truth is, fewer persons would now want to challenge or criticise the government knowing fully well that the security agents can easily track you down. China is well known for its clampdown on dissidents, some of whom are hurled into prison or placed under house arrest. Also recall that the government recently strengthened its grip on the internet with a recent order that the three main state-owned telecoms network carriers – China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom block all personal VPNs by February 1, 2018, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Read More: WhatsApp Users in China Reportedly Blocked From Sending Images & Videos

Apart from the recent clampdown on VPN, Facebook has for long being a casualty of the government’s internet censorship as well as Snapchat, Twitter and other social media apps, except those complying with the government’s censorship rules like WeChat, Weibo, and Baidu. Whatsapp was recently affected by the censorship policy as sending or receiving images and of course, videos via Whatsapp is practically impossible without the use of VPN. The government’s sledgehammer has also descended almost all of the foreign content hosted on the two popular video sharing websites — AcFun and Bilibili have vanished overnight. These two websites were extremely sought after by the Millennials in China because they had some of the most popular TV shows and movies from US, UK, South Korea and other foreign countries. Unlike Sina, iQiyi, and other Chinese video platforms, these two websites don’t have strict in-house censorship, which in turn made them popular hubs for foreign content. But all that has now changed, all thanks to the intervention of the Chinese government.

Related: China Strengthens Its Grip On The Internet: VPNs, WhatsApp, & Foreign Content Bear The Brunt

These moves are viewed as being precipitated by the upcoming national congress of China’s ruling party which will be held later this year. The government is known to often enforce strict clampdowns targetted at opposition elements in order to avoid anything that would be embarrassing to the government as well as to discourage criticism of party policies. Why this latest move is different is that the government is now going after the content directly unlike in the past when its censorship was centered around services.

(source, via)

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