Yahoo Finance 'Too many' AI models in China: Baidu CEO warns of wasted resources, lack of applications
Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong said China has too many large language models (LLMs) and called for tech leaders to focus more on building real-world applications powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
"In 2023, intense competition among over 100 LLMs has emerged in China, resulting in a significant waste of resources, particularly computing power," Li said during a panel discussion at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Thursday.
Li called on developers to build more practical applications rather than continuously tweaking the technology that underpins generative AI (GenAI) products like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
"I've noticed that many people still primarily focus on foundational models," he said. "But I want to ask: how about real-world applications? Who has benefited from them?"
China's GenAI market has become crowded with more than 200 LLMs appearing since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Excessive competition from Big Tech companies has resulted in a price war for commercial AI services, while global players like OpenAI and Google are locked out of the market.
Like much of the industry globally, China's AI market is still in the early stages of monetisation. Baidu's Li said that logistics and creative writing are two industries that have already benefited from AI-powered applications that improve efficiency.
Baidu Comate, the internet search giant's coding assistant powered by its Ernie LLM, has been deployed internally for employee use. Li said 30 percent of coding at the company is now handled by AI.
Baidu also introduced on Friday the its new Ernie 4.0 Turbo model, available to enterprise clients, accompanied by another 83 per cent price reduction for its Ernie 4.0 and Ernie 3.5 LLMs.
"I think applications are the key to determining whether this era is the critical moment for AI," said Xu Li, CEO and co-founder of Chinese AI pioneer SenseTime, on the same panel with Baidu's Li.
"While our industry is a hot topic nowadays, it hasn't reached its critical moment yet, because it has not yet penetrated any applications in any vertical industries that have caused widespread change," Xu added.
MiniMax CEO Yan Junjie, who leads another one of China's leading AI start-ups, said at the conference that he expects major industry consolidation in the future, with LLMs being primarily developed by just five companies.
The surprise overnight success of ChatGPT sparked a wave of soul searching in China and ignited a race to produce the best China-made LLMs.
In addition to a small cohort of start-ups dubbed China's "AI tigers", Big Tech companies have poured resources into the market. TikTok owner ByteDance, social media behemoth Tencent Holdings and e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the Post, started drastically slashing prices on LLM-based services in May in a bid to court users.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
