ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, has taken the tech world by storm.  

Developed by U.S. firm OpenAI, ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations. You can ask it questions and it will respond based on the massive amount of data the AI is trained on. 

Effectively, ChatGPT is AI that is able to generate content.

While ChatGPT is still in its infancy, the AI chatbot has proved to be an aid in many industries, for both employees and employers.

As a result, several Chinese tech companies are rolling out their own rival AI chatbots. Two of the biggest chatbots include Ernie Bot and Tongyi Qianwen, developed by two of the biggest Chinese companies, Baidu and Alibaba respectively. 

However, it is unclear how Chinese AI chatbots will perform in the market. 

China’s internet landscape is much different than anywhere else in the world and the country does have controversial censorship laws which could hinder any Chinese-developed chatbots to be adopted outside of China. 

Of course, like any new technology innovation, ChatGPT’s impact has had its share of downsides and negative implications for the tech industry.

According to a Goldman Sachs report, 300 million jobs globally stand to be impacted by AI and automation. 

The U.S. tech industry has already lost 5% more jobs in 2023 than it did in 2022 and appears on track to surpass the biggest tech layoffs of all time in 2001 caused by the dot.com crash. 

There also appears to be a technology battle that is developing between China and the U.S. to be the first to innovate and create new technologies.

Both the U.S. and China are the top 2 investors in AI technology, globally. The U.S. Defense Department is reportedly spending US$1.5 billion over five years on AI. This is in addition to another US$200 million by Congress and an undisclosed sum by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which successfully tested an AI-bot-piloted F-16 fighter jet recently. 

China’s spending is less clear, but estimates are in the billions of dollars. In April this year, Chinese regulators even released draft measures to manage generative AI, of which ChatGPT is classified as, in an attempt to mitigate the security dangers of the emerging technology.

While an uncertain future lies ahead, AI technology looks set to continue its upward trend, especially if China and the U.S. have anything to do with it.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.