From [HERE] At this point it should be common knowledge that if it has to do with any kind of speech, there is nothing that China won’t try to control and/or censor. It’s something of an amazing self-contradiction: in order to be large and powerful, the Beijing government believes it has to behave as though it is weak and cowardly. Wherever there might be real or potential speech or action against the government, there is the Chinese Communist Party trying to proactively make sure such speech can never reach a wider audience. Beijing, it would seem, has long desired for its people to be simple, programmable robots.

Or not? See, it turns out that some of our newer “robots” also engage in speech that the Chinese government is afraid of. Beijing officials have recently demanded the country’s tech companies disallow access to robot-poem-generator ChatGPT and its ilk for the populace, and added that any internally developed chat AI go through some form of digital re-education camp before being released to the Chinese people.

Chinese regulators have reportedly told the country’s tech giants not to offer access to AI chatbot ChatGPT over fears the tool will give “uncensored replies” to politically sensitive questions.

That’s according to a report from Nikkei Asia citing “people with direct knowledge of the matter.” Nikkei says Chinese regulators told tech firms Tencent and Ant Group (a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba) to not only restrict access to the US-developed ChatGPT, but to also report to officials before launching their own rival chatbots.

This is par for the course. Whenever some new avenue for potential unsanctioned speech comes about, Beijing is quick to regulate it. After all, the survival of the current regime appears to rely on that regime’s ability to keep its people from knowing anything that hasn’t gone through the government’s information cheesecloth. At least, that certainly is how the government behaves.

Which is ultimately kind of dumb anyway. Like many other attempts to strictly control its people’s use of technology, the Chinese public has already been able to access ChatGPT through VPNs and all kinds of other proxy platforms. While Chinese tech companies are happily playing whac-a-mole with those platforms, it isn’t working all that well.

“ChatGPT has gone viral in China, but there is growing concern that the artificial intelligence could provide a helping hand to the US government in its spread of disinformation and its manipulation of global narratives for its own geopolitical interests,” said ChinaDaily reporter Meng Zhe.

Here again China faces the same question it always faces in these situations: will it hamper its ability to strictly control its populace in order to advance technologically, or will it hamper its advancement in technology in order to maintain strict control over its populace. The government has and will continue to try to thread the needle in order to get the best of both worlds… and it will continue to fail.

Whatever happens next, Chinese tech giants will find it tricky to navigate such limitations. Restricting the training data for chatbots will hobble their abilities in comparison to Western rivals, and even if their input is tightly controlled, users may still be able to solicit unwanted responses for which the companies will likely be held accountable.

Which will temper any interest Chinese companies have in developing this technology in the first place. So, if AI systems like ChatGPT are to be an important part of the globe’s future, the China is setting itself up to be left behind. 

And if the quality of the poem I had ChatGPT write me about how awesome sausages are, this might not be a train the Chinese government want to miss.