A Chinese state-funded artificial intelligence (AI) company has just announced the launch of “Spark Model”, an AI system designed to compete directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The launch by the company, iFlytek, took place at a technology event in Hefei called “Spark Desk” and featured a full demonstration of the new system’s capabilities.
.#China‘s leading intelligent speech and artificial intelligence (AI) company iFLYTEK launched its generative language model on Saturday. The company said it will keep updating it to a version better than the rival ChatGPT by Oct.. pic.twitter.com/zjSrPbAXKy
—Beijing Daily (@DailyBeijing) May 8, 2023
The founder and president of iFlytek, Liu Qingfeng told attendees at the event that the Spark Model – also called the “grand cognitive model” – represented the “dawn of artificial general intelligence”.
Although there is no scientific consensus on whether the artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn’t even possible with current machine learning techniques, the billionaire tech mogul offered a comparison with ChatGPT and an update schedule:
“This year we will continue to update the great model, and on October 10, we will surpass ChatGPT in Chinese and reach the same level as English.”
Details about the underlying technology powering Spark Model are scant at the time of writing, but Qingfeng described the AI’s capabilities as “far ahead of the existing system that can be measured in China.”
Direct comparisons between ChatGPT and similar models can be difficult to make without parallel benchmarking. OpenAI not only keeps training details and other confidential information secret, but also ChatGPT is banned in China, which limits OpenAI’s ability to train its models on Chinese languages and culture.
The current ban on ChatGPT in China has been described as potentially stifling, especially when compared to Hong Kong – a city designated as a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China – where there is no blanket ban on the use of technologies like ChatGPT and cryptocurrencies.
In Hong Kong and throughout the West, ChatGPT has become increasingly popular among cryptocurrency users and businesses for its ability to generate code and as the underlying technology for developing advanced trading bots and wallet analytics.
If the proposed updates to the Spark model succeed in giving iFlytek an advantage over OpenAI and ChatGPT, it would not only represent a monumental moment in technology (ChatGPT is widely considered to be one of the most powerful generative AI systems today.), but would also have done so in a relatively short period of time.
According to Qingfeng, the company’s research arm began work on the Spark Model just six months ago, on December 22, 2022. For comparison, OpenAI started developing the precursor to its GPT products in 2015. ChatGPT didn’t launch until November 30, 2022.
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