There has been a lot of publicity on generative AI “chat bot” innovations from North America; OpenAI’s ChatGPT4, Google’s Bard, and most recently AmazonQ are all at the competitive trough. And of course, we cannot forget Meta’s AI chat bot, which has a partnership as well with Microsoft’s Bing, playing both sides (OpenAI and Meta), smart chess move by Microsoft.
The ERNIE chatbot is based on Baidu’s internally developed large language model, which uses enhanced representation through knowledge integration. ERNIE like the other generative chatbots can generate text, images, and videos. It primarily operates in Mandarin Chinese, but can also handle English queries to a lesser extent.
Recently ERNIE Bot has reached over 100 million users so on par on users, although recent stats show OpenAI usage is lightening. ERNIE Bot was also just ranked by Super Clue as the top Chinese AI Chatbot.
Only announced on March 16th, and released to the public in August, ERNIE Bot’s growth has also been staggering. With China’s new AI Law on generative AI, China has become one of the first countries to regulate the technology. Even North America and the UK have not passed laws on generative AI. Will the laws be followed – that’s another big question.
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet watchdog, has also unveiled a set of guidelines on generative AI.
For those AI techies and AI Data Scientists, ERNIE Bot is a culmination of years of research and industry practices by Baidu and it can interact in dialogue, create content, reason with knowledge, and generate multiple modes of output. ERNIE Bot was developed based on the ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) and PLATO (Pre-trained Dialogue Generation Model) series models. Its key technologies include supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning with human feedback, prompt learning, knowledge enhancement, retrieval enhancement, and dialogue enhancement. The first three are commonly used technologies in this type of LLM, which have been applied and accumulated in ERNIE and PLATO and have been further strengthened and refined in ERNIE Bot. The latter three are innovations built on Baidu’s existing technological advantages and provide a solid foundation for ERNIE Bot’s future growth.
For business executives, before you make a call out on which of the leading tech titan vendors chat bots you should use, don’t understand the power of ERNIE bot, and Baidu’s research, as well as the innovations of VIN.ai in Vietnam led by Dr. Hung Bui, CEO.
In the world of AI, one needs to really be clear on their strategic ecosystem partners, and Microsoft with its investment in both OpenAI and ERNIE Bot (via BING search), strategies on AI solutioning, Microsoft has to be in the top choices. It for sure won’t be Oracle or SAP for generative AI as they will integrate these solutions into their platforms. Investing in generative AI is a very expensive proposition, and the market cannot consume all the technological generative AI innovations, so start ups, choose carefully your entry points.
I would be remiss if I did not mention Google Bard, as interestingly global banks like the Bank of Nova Scotia, says Chief Data Scientist, Dr. Yannick Lallment, “carefully selected using Google AI /ML toolkits as a cornerstone of their AI technology toolkits,” and I have to say our AI/ML data scientists do as well.
Maybe one day Elon Musk will take a swing at purchasing more shares in Microsoft as his investment in X (former Twitter) has to be a tax driven strategy vs income healthy growth strategy given the crazy dynamics under foot in X.
And let’s not forget that Elon Musk announced in late November, Grok, a rebellious AI Chatbot with no guardrails, brand fitting with Elon’s bravado bellows on X. That being said, his genius is unparalleled, no one ever has ever had has many innovation firsts Tesla – electric cars, SpaceX – humans into space, and many more.
So don’t be surprised if he tries to buy some of the major AI chat bot players and amass another blazing trail. He is indeed our 21st century Thomas Edisson and is deserving of a Nobel Prize. Just hopefully he shows up. Must read Elon’s life story, by Walter Issacson, it’s exceptionally insightful.
So, the generative AI race is well on its way and China’s Baidu is going to capture the Asian market’s hearts and that’s a lot of hearts. I cannot wait to see what the leading emerging players, like Anthropica, or Cohere are able to achieve in 2024 and will cover them both in the NY.
Notes:
Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, products, and artificial intelligence, headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and Internet companies in the world and its valuation is approaching $42B.
Brilliant Microsoft valuation growth in 2023 as AI and generative AI driven gains can propel Microsoft Corp. to join Apple Inc. in the elite category of stocks with a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion. That’s according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, whose new $415 price target for the software giant implies a valuation of around $3.1 trillion. Also, their CEO, Satya Nadella, with his many accolades was bestowed on December 13th, 2023 from Yale the legend in leadership award.
