What bots can’t say
China’s internet is tightly controlled. Most foreign media is kept out by a technological barrier known as the Great Firewall. Inside the country, censors constantly monitor online commentary. Under Xi Jinping, censorship has become much stricter. In 2023, the Toronto-based cybersecurity group Citizen Lab found more than 66,000 rules regulating the content offered by search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, the only foreign platform still operating in mainland China.
AI, however, is a bigger challenge. The government takes great interest in the operations of tech companies to ensure that chatbots follow the rules that govern online content. Ernie Bot, China’s equivalent to CHATGPT, finds no information about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989, for example. This oversight is likely to slow down the development of Chinese chatbots compared with those elsewhere.
However, that applies only to public-facing AI. When it comes to machine learning for business, there are few limits. China wants to lead the world in AI without dealing with subversive content. Mckinsey & Company estimates that AI could add more than $600 billion of value to China’s economy annually over the coming decade.