Text | Li Enhan China (Shenzhen) Comprehensive Development Research Institute Tongzheng Digital Economy Research Center, postdoctoral fellow in economics.
Recently, ChatGPT has been widely concerned and enthusiastically sought after by the Internet in China, and it has brought the Internet myth that the global monthly users have exceeded 100 million, making it the fastest accumulated application program for Internet users in history. As long as users ask questions about it, ChatGPT will almost immediately start the mode of "mumbling" and "chattering", presenting seemingly impeccable answers on the screen, just like an omniscient "knowing the king".
I. "Knowing the King" ChatGPT and its past lives
ChatGPT was developed and launched by OpenAI team in November 2022. In essence, it is an artificial intelligence language model based on large-scale natural language pre-training. It is trained for tasks such as natural language generation, dialogue system, language translation, question answering and text summarization, and can interact with human beings in a very close way to natural language. Among them, "Chat" in ChatGPT is the interaction mode between ChatGPT and users through chatting; GPT is the abbreviation of the model it applies-Generative Pre-trained Transformer.
The historical development of ChatGPT can be traced back to 2016. At that time, OpenAI released the first version of GPT model (GPT-1), with a model size of 117 million parameters. Since then, OpenAI has successively released larger models such as GPT-2 and GPT-3, with 150 million and 1.75 trillion parameters respectively. GPT-3 has become one of the largest and strongest language models, which can handle complex natural language tasks and generate high-quality articles and dialogues.
However, it cannot be ignored that ChatGPT also has many limitations. As far as the content it generates is concerned, the most prominent problem is that ChatGPT sometimes provides seemingly reasonable answers that are inconsistent with the facts or even absurd, which is also recognized by OpenAI. Just as ChatGPT said to "what is’ knowing the king’?" The answer to this question is the same-
"Knowing the king" is a kind of network language, which is usually used to describe people who are very proficient in a certain field or skill, equivalent to words such as "expert" and "master". Knowing Wang not only has extensive and in-depth knowledge in a certain field, but also can deeply analyze a certain problem or phenomenon, put forward unique opinions and analysis, and win the respect and trust of others.
In addition, "knowing the king" can also be used to satirize those false and self-righteous "experts" or "masters", suggesting that they look very good on the surface, but in fact they just "know the king falsely" and lack real knowledge and ability.
ChatGPT is between "knowing the king" and "knowing the king" in the field of content-related text generation. On the one hand, it can be used as a powerful tool for content producers, on the other hand, it should be alert to the noise in the information it provides, and its maximum efficiency can not be achieved without relying on the user’s professional skill level, information screening ability and further information verification ability.
Second, the development opportunities brought by ChatGPT
ChatGPT, as a phenomenal and killer application of the Internet, not only shows the world the breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence, but also triggers unprecedented attention to this industry, especially the generative artificial intelligence industry, bringing new development opportunities for the development of related industries.
(1) Promoting the development of natural language processing technology. The success of ChatGPT has played an important role in promoting the development of natural language processing technology. As a language model based on Transformer, ChatGPT can automatically learn the rules and structure of language, and then generate coherent and semantically fluent texts. This provides more possibilities for the application of natural language processing technology, such as automatic question answering system, machine translation, intelligent customer service and other fields.
(2) Improve the popularity of artificial intelligence technology. ChatGPT, as an interesting and practical application of artificial intelligence, not only aroused the collective excitement of scientific and technological circles and Internet circles, but also attracted the attention of many ordinary users. While people are discussing whether artificial intelligence will replace humans or eliminate certain industries, more consensus is reached that "people who can use AI will replace those who can’t use AI". More people begin to pay attention to and understand artificial intelligence technology, and realize its potential value in daily life and work, which provides an excellent opportunity for the popularization of artificial intelligence technology, and will further promote the popularization of artificial intelligence technology and the expansion of related application scenarios.
(3) Enhance confidence in the development of the artificial intelligence industry. The success of ChatGPT has attracted worldwide attention and provided investors with more confidence and motivation. This will further accelerate the development of artificial intelligence industry, help related enterprises to obtain financing, and further grow and strengthen, and provide a shot in the arm for the development of artificial intelligence industry in China.
(4) Forced the emergence of domestic related products and applications. The appearance of ChatGPT not only shows the good market development prospect of generative artificial intelligence, but also sounds the alarm for related enterprises in China because of its excellent support for Chinese. Since February, 2023, Baidu, Ali, Tencent, JD.COM, Byte, iFLYTEK and other enterprises have indicated that they have carried out in-depth research in the field of large models, among which Baidu confirmed that it will hold a press conference on March 16th this year to disclose its ChatGPT-like product "ERNIE Bot".
(5) Enriching the ecology of artificial intelligence industry. The success of ChatGPT has also brought new opportunities for the artificial intelligence industry ecosystem. The application and promotion of generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT will give birth to the formation of more industrial chains and industrial ecology, such as the industrial chain of automatic writing and content creation based on generative artificial intelligence, the industrial chain of educational intelligence, and the new generation of infrastructure and more powerful computing power deployed around artificial intelligence technology. In addition, generative artificial intelligence will also be applied in art, music, design and other fields to inspire practitioners to create inspiration and help create better works of art.
Third, the "Chinese-style" challenge triggered by ChatGPT
In the artificial intelligence storm caused by ChatGPT, we should not only see the development opportunities it may bring, but also be alert to the challenges it causes. In addition to the general concerns about artificial intelligence technology itself, such as data source, copyright ownership and echo chamber effect, ChatGPT has also caused some unique problems in China that deserve attention.
(A) how to prevent the decoupling of new technologies?
An interesting phenomenon is that while Chinese users can’t connect to ChatGPT in official website through the domestic network, ChatGPT can’t receive registration short messages through the mobile phone numbers in China and Hongkong. ChatGPT’s answer to this question is due to the limitation of telecom operators. However, this seemingly tacit "two-way trip" exposes the risk of new technology decoupling that China may face, that is, foreign high-tech enterprises may exclude China from the scope of technology application on the grounds of regulatory restrictions, leading to the failure of ordinary users in China to share the dividend of technological progress, and the increase in R&D costs of employees in the field of scientific and technological innovation will more widely inhibit China’s innovation vitality.
(2) How to deal with the "wrong" answer of generative artificial intelligence?
In the iterative process of updating ChatGPT, another phenomenon is also worthy of our attention, that is, ChatGPT has had serious language pornography and bloody violence. Fortunately, its audience was still relatively small at that time, and it was not excessively questioned and condemned by the media and users, and the problem was quickly solved by the outsourcing manual team. However, after the explosion of ChatGPT, its political inclination and other issues were brought to the table again. Considering the national security and the special development period, when faced with the "wrong" answers generated by the generative artificial intelligence products similar to ChatGPT in China, the overall balance between the tolerance of regulators and the definition and attribution of responsibilities will become another important factor affecting the development of artificial intelligence enterprises in China.
(3) How to create an R&D environment that is more conducive to innovation and breakthrough?
Behind the Internet craze in China caused by ChatGPT, there is always a question, that is, "Why wasn’t ChatGPT born in China?" Faced with this problem, the optimistic answer is that there is no big gap in the underlying technology in the field of artificial intelligence in China, only because domestic enterprises have insufficient awareness of commercialization; Pessimists think that more efforts are needed to reform the system, so that more products like ChatGPT can emerge in China. However, from the path of OpenAI’s research and development of ChatGPT and other products, we can see that the launch of phenomenal products in this field cannot be separated from the "violent" investment of a large number of capital, talents, data and other factors. Behind OpenAI, there are always huge figures of "giants" such as Microsoft and Musk. In the future, how can China find a balance between anti-monopoly supervision such as platform supervision and "pinching mergers and acquisitions" and giving full play to the important role of large enterprises in technology research and development and innovation may be the real answer to the above questions.