context: Last week, Baidu launched its ChatGPT rival ERNIE Bot. The market was disappointed by the bot’s lack of originality and uncertain level, letting Baidu’s stock price plummet.
ERNIE Bot still constitutes an impressive achievement for Chinese scitech development, argues Xin Haiguang 信海光 21st Century Business Herald tech journalist. While the bot cannot fully measure up to ChatGPT, its capabilities actually seem surprisingly close, he observes. Compared to other strategic emerging technologies, such as semiconductor design, Xin notes, this puts China very close to the world’s cutting edge. Xin further argues that it is not just Chinese tech giants who scramble to compete with ChatGPT; Western giants like Google, Amazon or Meta have not brought successful products to the market either.
Nevertheless, Xin acknowledges, domestic companies have a latecomer disadvantage which may prove painful if China also falls behind in spin-off innovations based on chatbots. While the Chinese market can do a lot to guide tech companies to quickly catch up, he also urges more government support in talent training, tech ethics and ecosystem construction.
Xin further observes a degree of anxiety among Chinese knowledge workers wondering whether their jobs will become obsolete.