Writing from Hong Kong. La last week, I discovered that the world’s two wonderful AI superpowers seem to be leading the global AI arms race in opposite directions. Lawmakers have been reluctant to impose even the slightest restriction on new and rapidly evolving technologies. China, on the other hand, has established a dense regulatory framework for AI, designed to eliminate every conceivable risk.
These differences are even more evident this week.
In the U. S. , of course, everyone is appalled by Scarlett Johansson’s accusation that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used a voice “eerily” similar to her own for Sky, the chatbot mode featured in OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT update. Altman’s few insistences that he “never wanted” the chatbot to look like him. The main points of the case — that Altman approached Johansson to ask for a license for his voice, that she refused, that he still persisted in employing a voice similar to Johansson’s — stoked Hollywood’s worst fears about arrogance. Tech brothers who employ AI to scam creators.
In China, the big news of the week on AI is that the national regulator is launching its own chatbot, this one based on the ideas of President Xi Jinping. The Financial Times reports that a think tank under China’s strict Cyberspace Administration is springing up in a wide range of languages. style based on the political philosophy of China’s leadership, known as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”. The Wall Street Journal reports that the chatbot will also be trained on six professional-generated databases.
It’s unclear whether the CAC’s chatbot, which the two newspapers have dubbed “Xi PT Chat,” is intended for use, or even if it will be made public. But it’s not hard to believe how such a style can be used simply as a tool to impose ideological orthodoxy.
None of those approaches to AI governance seem sustainable to me. At some point, the American electorate will avoid accepting AI developers’ claims that the only way the U. S. can hope to compete with China, save democracy, and maintain the American way of life is to let giant tech corporations use AI as they see fit. And, in reality, Chinese officials will come to perceive that too much state over AI will slow the speed of innovation and leave China less safe, not more. Or will they? For now, the generation continues to get smarter and faster than the other people who create and use it.
Further down
Clay Chandlerclay. chandler@fortune. comFollow on LinkedIn
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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.