Inventor of China’s Firewall says that AI bots like ChatGPT pose big challenges for governments

The father of China’s Great Firewall, Fang Bingxing, has expressed worry about GPT-4, warning that it could lead to an “information cocoon” because the generative artificial intelligence tool can provide solutions to everything. According to an interview published on Thursday by Red Star News, a media affiliate of the state-backed Chengdu Economic Daily, Fang believes the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and now released as the more powerful ChatGPT-4 version, poses a significant challenge to governments around the world. “Seeking answers leads to manipulation” says Fang “As people seek all kinds of answers from AI, their perspectives can be manipulated,” he was cited as saying. Fang, a former government official and computer scientist, is generally regarded as the main architect of China’s infamous internet filtering and monitoring system. He was instrumental in the design and implementation of the Great Firewall, a complex network of internet censors and bans that enables the Chinese government to control what its people can access online. Over the last decade, the Great Firewall has been strengthened, preventing Chinese netizens from accessing a broad variety of foreign websites and online services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Many people predicted that creating a ChatGPT-like service in China would be difficult due to the country’s highly censored internet, which makes it difficult to anticipate and control responses. Services like ChatGPT not for the public According to a February story by Nikkei Asia which cited various sources from the Chinese AI industry, China’s powerful internet regulators have instructed Chinese tech firms not to give ChatGPT access to the public and that they must notify the authorities before starting their own ChatGPT-like services. Despite clear gaps between China’s ChatGPT options and their foreign counterparts, the excitement sparked by ChatGPT continues in China after Microsoft unveiled its fearsome AI-powered office tools. Baidu, the Chinese search engine behemoth, was the first among local internet firms to launch a ChatGPT-like service called Ernie Bot, or Wenxin Yiyan in Chinese. China cracking down on AI services for the public However, Ernie Bot’s launch in Beijing on Thursday was underwhelming, sending its shares down 6.4 per cent for the day in Hong Kong. According to Bloomberg, Baidu’s stock rose on Friday morning after investment banks such as Citigroup issued optimistic forecasts on the success of Baidu’s Ernie Bot in their reports. Fang also cautioned that as AI advances, it may represent a danger to humans. “Now it’s merely software used in an online chat-like situation. If it is incorporated into robots and vehicles, we must be cautious of the possible damage it could cause to people." In China, similar cautions are plentiful. In February, Zhou Hongyi, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder and CEO of the internet security firm Qihoo 360, stated that ChatGPT could become self-aware and pose a danger to humans within 2 to 3 years. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.