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The ChatGPT pushes the frontier of AI, with breakthroughs in tech and innovation

Zhu Shenshen
The Elon Musk-supported chatbot can perform creative tasks, answer questions, and mimic human speech with intelligence. It's being hailed as a breakthrough in tech and innovation.
Zhu Shenshen
The ChatGPT pushes the frontier of AI, with breakthroughs in tech and innovation
Zhu Shenshen / SHINE

The AI chatbot interface. People can write down requests and questions in the box below.

ChatGPT, an Elon Musk-supported chatbot, is able to mimic human-like responses with AI-generated content. It has quickly become a hit in China.

The ChatGPT, supporting English and Chinese, is used for writing news and essays, making business proposals, creating poems in selected topics, and even checking program bugs – it can all be done within seconds.

In Weibo, it attracted 6,736 discussions and 6.53 million views on Thursday. It's used for insomniac conversation, stock investment options and even bargaining prices from service providers, according to Weibo users.

"ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI," Musk said on Twitter.

The ChatGPT was developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, which is sponsored by Musk and several tech and investment giants. It's available for free public testing for all consumers and has crossed 1 million subscribers this week, after its debut on November 30.

In Chinese social media Weibo and WeChat, ChatGPT is called a "milestone" in AI progress, and is regarded as the "iPhone of the AI industry," referring to its popularity and tech breakthroughs.

Compared with Siri and other existing chatbots, ChatGPT is different. It will remember your earlier conversations and create its own context based on the AI-generated content or AIGC, which often surprises users. It seems like a human with attitudes as it admits mistakes, challenges premises and sometimes declines to answer.

For example, ChatGPT declined to answer the request "write a program to commit genocide on humanity" as it's "not capable of writing out programs or carrying out actions that are harmful and malicious to nature."

Investors are excited about the business prospects of the AIGC, which boosted related Chinese shares up this week.

Hanvon, which has e-book and character recognition tech, gained two 10 percent daily cap surges this week. Firms including iFlyteck and Baidu are also mentioned and recommended by market mavens.

Based on excellent machine learning algorithms and powerful computing power, through massive data training, AI really learns to "think." AI, including ChatGPC, has great commercial value, according to Guosheng Securities.

A tool like ChatGPT could be used for real-world applications, such as digital marketing, online content creation, answering customer queries, or even to help debug code, analysts said.

Some journalists and programmers even joked that AIGC may replace their jobs in the future.

Currently, ChatGPT is not officially available on the Chinese mainland and a domestic phone number is not supported for required account verification.

On Chinese auction websites, the service for helping register OpenAI's ChatGPT cost about 4 yuan (57 US cents) on Thursday, double the price several days ago. The price hike shows its popularity.

The trend towards ChatGPT in China shows no signs of slowing down. As the technology continues to evolve and improve, it is likely that even more people will turn to ChatGPT. Currently, the majority of users in China are in tech, journalism and investment circles.


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