Chinese organisations launched 79 AI large language models since 2020 - report

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30/05/2023 10:36

BEIJING, May 30 (Reuters) - Chinese organisations
launched 79 large-language models (LLMs) in the country over the
past three years as they doubled down on efforts to develop
artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, a report by state-run
research institutes said.
    The development of LLMs, trained using deep learning
techniques on massive amounts of text data, entered an
"accelerated" phase in 2020, as per the report authored by
research institutes run by the country's Ministry of Science and
Technology.
    In 2020, Chinese organisations released 2 LLMs, compared
with 11 in the United States, but in 2021 there was a total of
30 LLMs released in each country, said the report published on
Sunday.
    U.S. organisations in total released 37 LLMs the following
year, to China's 28, according to figures compiled in the
report, whose co-authors include the Institute of Scientific and
Technical Information of China.
    So far this year, China is in the lead with 19 LLMs to U.S.'
18.
    "Judging from the distribution of large-language models
released around the world, China and the United States lead by a
big margin, accounting for more than 80% of the global total,"
the report concluded, according to a press release that
summarised the report's main findings.
    "The United States has always ranked first in the world in
terms of the number of large-language models."
    The report comes when the country's AI industry faces
significant challenges as U.S.-led export controls restrict
Chinese organisations from accessing semiconductors used to
train LLMs, among other advanced computing tasks.
    The report analysed the 79 LLMs developed in China, noting
that while there were already 14 provinces and regions where
such technology was developed, joint development projects
between academia and industry were "insufficient."
    After OpenAI released ChatGPT, Chinese tech giants, from
Alibaba  9988.HK  to surveillance firm Sensetime  0020.HK  and
search engine giant Baidu  9888.HK , have launched their own
versions of chatbots powered by generative AI and LLMs. 
    

 (Reporting by Qiaoyi Li and Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Brenda
Goh and Sriraj Kalluvila)
 ((Eduardo.MonteiroBaptista@thomsonreuters.com;))