Along the way, Beijing tamed the industry’s ambition and weakened its innovative edge.
But tech companies and investors are also to blame for falling behind their Silicon Valley counterparts. Even before the government began to lay a stronger hand on them, Chinese tech leaders were focused on making money and reluctant to spend on research projects that were unlikely to generate revenue any time soon. After the government onslaught in recent years, executives are even less inclined to invest in companies for the long term.
In 2021, the United States led the world in total private investment in AI and in the number of newly funded AI companies, which was three to two times China’s levels, according to Stanford University. AI Index Annual Report 2022.
But the government has been AI’s biggest barrier: its obsession with censorship is perhaps its heaviest stick. The availability of a wide range of data is crucial to developing technology like ChatGPT, and that is increasingly difficult to achieve in a censored online environment.
Nowadays, jokes are circulating that capture the dark mood among tech people. A popular one: “We need to teach machines not only to talk, but also not to talk.”
Beijing has punished companies, sometimes harshly, for enforcing its censorship protocols. Duolingo, which is in the seemingly uncontroversial business of teaching people new languages, was taken out of Chinese app stores for nearly a year to “improve their content regulation,” according to Chinese media reports.
“Many of us in the Internet industry face two problems when making a product: either our products don’t involve speech, or they have to undergo a lot of censorship,” said Hao Peiqiang, a former entrepreneur and programmer in the north. Tianjin city. “Big companies can afford it, but smaller companies can’t,” he said. “If small businesses can’t do this, it stifles innovation.”
OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT with the help of money from Microsoft, has not made the tool available in China. Users in mainland China must use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to gain access.
