In a recent unveiling, Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent proudly showcased its latest chatbot creation, “Hunyuan Aide,” asserting that its capabilities rival those of the prominent U.S. counterpart, ChatGPT. The emergence of Hunyuan Aide closely follows the introduction of “ERNIE Bot” by fellow Chinese tech titan Baidu just last month.
This announcement comes in the wake of Beijing’s recent regulatory reforms aimed at providing a competitive edge to AI developers while maintaining strict control over online information, aligning them with global AI leaders such as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and Microsoft.
During a live demonstration at a streamed summit, Vice President Jiang Jie presented Hunyuan Aide’s prowess, illustrating its responsiveness to typed queries and its ability to tackle rudimentary arithmetic problems. He boldly claimed that the chatbot surpassed OpenAI’s earlier model, GPT-3.5, and stood on par with GPT-4 in discerning intricate queries, including those laden with ambiguities such as “what is the safe way to speed.” Furthermore, Jiang asserted that it outperformed GPT-4 when tackling questions from China’s demanding university entrance exams.
It is important to note that AFP was unable to independently verify these assertions.
Jiang elucidated, “Compared to the prevalent open-source large language models in the current market, our method effectively reduces the hallucination rate by 30 to 50 percent,” alluding to the issue of AI generating false or nonsensical content.
Hunyuan Aide, trained on an impressive dataset of over two trillion tokens and equipped with over 100 billion parameters, will undergo continuous updates, as Jiang explained, ensuring its relevance in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Tencent, the parent company of the popular WeChat super-app, lauded Hunyuan Aide for its “powerful Chinese language writing ability, the ability to make logical inferences in complicated linguistic contexts, and reliable task execution ability” in a statement released on Thursday.
The advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, renowned for its on-demand essay, poetry, and code generation within seconds, has sparked concerns about potential misuse and the potential obsolescence of certain professions.
In the relentless global pursuit of AI supremacy, Chinese tech giants, including e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com, have embarked on endeavors to develop rival software. As a testament to its confidence in Hunyuan Aide’s capabilities, Tencent rolled out a WeChat program granting users access to a beta version, although, as of Thursday, a waiting list remained in place, attesting to the keen interest surrounding this innovative chatbot.
AFP
