Advertisement
China stock market
BusinessChina Business

Elon Musk calls for pause on GPT-4 and Chinese AI-related stocks tumble along with Baidu

  • Stocks slide after Tesla’s CEO called for an immediate pause to training new AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing risks to humanity
  • Baidu has jumped ahead of rivals like Tencent, Alibaba and SenseTime in creating its own chatbot

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
A netizen shows information about Baidu’s ‘Ernie Bot’ on his mobile phone on March 24. The bot’s Vincennes diagram function has been ridiculed by netizens. Photo: Getty Images
Jiaxing Li

Chinese stocks that rallied on the ChatGPT frenzy are now inflicting heavy losses on investors, after a drumbeat of caution raised by industry leaders from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to the founder of China’s Great Firewall Fang Xingbing.

An index tracking artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen slipped 1.2 per cent on Thursday, taking the decline this week to 3.2 per cent, according to the CSI AI Index on EastMoney Information website. If sustained, the gauge will mark its biggest weekly loss in three months. The AI Index had risen 15 per cent since buzz about ChatGPT hit a feverish pitch in early February.

Beijing Haitian Ruisheng Science, an AI data resource company, crashed 18 per cent to 211.27 yuan. Cloudwalk, a face recognition technology developer, slipped 5.7 per cent to 41 yuan. Hanwang Technology, which sells handwriting-recognition software, dropped 6.5 per cent to 30.66 yuan. Mirroring the slide, Baidu slumped 3.6 per cent to HK$149.50 in Hong Kong.

A screen shows a message marking the Hong Kong listing of Baidu in March 2021. Photo: Bloomberg
A screen shows a message marking the Hong Kong listing of Baidu in March 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

“The business model for AI technology is not clear yet, and most Chinese companies are still involved in the R&D stage which needs constant investment,” Chen Mengzhu, analyst at Sealand Securities said in a research note on Thursday. Some companies simply might not have enough cash to burn, she added.

The stock losses deepened after Elon Musk this week called for an immediate pause in the training of AI systems amid a rush to create more powerful tools than GPT-4 for at least six months, saying AI systems with human-competitive intelligence “can pose profound risks to society and humanity.”
Fang, regarded as the designer of China’s internet-censoring system that has blocked access to Facebook, Google and Twitter, warned that the technology can manipulate people’s perceptions and lead to an “information cocoon,” offering big challenges to governments around the world.

Baidu unveiled its ChatGPT-like chatbot called Ernie Bot earlier this month in a bid to upstage its competitors like Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings and SenseTime. This week, the search-engine operator cancelled a launch event for a smart Cloud product empowered by its bot, pressuring its stock price.
Advertisement