Chinese tech giant Baidu is setting up a venture capital fund of $145 million or 1 billion yuan to back AI-focused startups. Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li announced the launch of the fund at a JP Morgan summit in China this week.

The move could signal China’s push towards self-reliance in the cut-throat generative AI sector. The fund will support the development and innovation of AI-based content creation, such as chatbots, video and audio synthesis, and natural language processing.

The fund is targeting early-stage AI applications, an area which Chinese generative AI startups have so far struggled to reach widespread adoption.

Also read: AI Code of Conduct Coming ‘Within Weeks’ Says US and Europe

Tailing the US’s OpenAI

OpenAI recently created an investment fund valued at more than $175 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. the company has been investing in startups, with its OpenAI Startup Fund to back companies “pushing the boundaries of how powerful AI can positively impact the world.”

Baidu is also planning to launch competition for developers to build applications using its Ernie large language model (LLM) or integrate the model into their existing products, in a similar fashion other tech firms are using OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology.

Ernie bot is Baidu’s own AI-powered LLM that can generate natural and coherent texts based on user inputs.

“American developers are building new applications based on ChatGPT or other language models. In China, there will be an increasing number of developers building AI applications using Ernie as their foundation,” said Li.

Baidu unveiled the chatbot in March this year and claimed that it outperformed other LLMs in several benchmarks.

Battle for AI supremacy

The success of ChatGPT has put Chinese tech companies under pressure to fast-track the release of their own LLMs and bring them to market.

According to Reuters there are over 75 Chinese companies that have already released their own LLMs since 2020. Baidu and e-commerce giant Alibaba are among these companies.

A report by a state-run research firm says over 79 LLMs have been launched in the past 3 years.

And the Baidu boss predicts that in the generative AI age, Chinese companies will catch up, and even lead the way in discovering commercial applications for AI.

“I am very bullish on China AI development. Over the past few decades, China has warmly embraced new technologies,” said Li.

“Even though we didn’t invent Android, iOS or Windows, we developed a host of very innovative applications like WeChat, Douyin and Didi. Many of them are popular and useful. The same trend is playing out in the AI age. Technology ushers in a myriad of possibilities and we are good at capturing them to build applications,” explained Li.

LLMs, a vital tech

Since they can produce realistic and varied material across a range of subjects and forms, LLMs are seen as a vital technology for expanding AI applications and services. They do, however, also present ethical and legal difficulties, such as possible abuse, plagiarism, and bias. China released draft regulations on the use of generative AI in April in response to the spike in LLMs, requiring developers to acquire approval and explicitly label such products.

The growth and adoption of AI-based content production in China and elsewhere are anticipated to be accelerated by Baidu’s venture capital fund and competition.

On Wednesday a top EU official said the European Union and United States expect to draft a voluntary code of conduct on artificial intelligence within weeks. The move comes amid concerns about the potential risks of AI on humanity, and as calls for regulation intensify.

European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager said that the United States and the European Union should promote a voluntary code of conduct for AI to provide safeguards as new legislation is being developed.

She was speaking at a meeting of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), which is jointly led by American and European officials. Any new rules on AI will not take effect until at least after three years, she said. The code is, therefore, expected to bridge that gap.

Also read: EU Antitrust Chief Steps up Rhetoric on Metaverse, AI Regulation

Game-changing AI technology

“We need accountable artificial intelligence. Generative AI is a complete game changer,” Vestager said after the council’s meeting in Sweden, AP reported.

“Everyone knows this is the next powerful thing. So within the next weeks, we will advance a draft of an AI code of conduct.”

She said officials will gather feedback from companies developing and using AI, and other industry players. Vestager hopes there would be a final proposal “very, very soon for industry to commit to voluntarily.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had an “intensive and productive” discussion on AI with his European counterparts at the TTC forum.

“[The council has] an important role to play in helping establish voluntary codes of conduct that would be open to all like-minded countries,” Blinken said.

AI could end human race

The development of AI has raised concerns about its potential to be used for harmful purposes, such as discrimination, surveillance, and nuclear war. There have also been concerns about the potential for AI to create mass unemployment.

As MetaNews previously reported, one of the core issues is what experts described as the “alignment problem.” Essentially, the problem refers to the difficulty of ensuring that an AI system’s goals and objectives are aligned with those of its human creators.

Critics say the danger is that an AI system may develop its own goals and objectives that conflict with those of its creators, leading to disastrous outcomes. On Tuesday, about 350 scientists and experts signed a statement calling for AI regulation to be a global priority.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement stated.

The statement is from San Francisco-based non-profit the Center for AI Safety. It was signed by chief executives from Google DeepMind and ChatGPT creators OpenAI, along with other major figures in artificial intelligence research.

In May, leaders of the so-called G7 nations met in Japan and called for the development of technical standards to keep AI “trustworthy”. They urged international dialogue on the governance of AI, copyright, transparency, and the threat of disinformation.

⚠️Accountability on #AI can't wait. It is NOW. Today #TTC kicked off work on a 1st voluntary AI #CodeOfConduct. We’ll work with our key partners & the #AI community on #safeguards to make AI responsible, safe & trustworthy. This is a huge step in a race we can't afford to lose. pic.twitter.com/WBcazIysiK

— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) May 31, 2023

According to Vestager, specific agreements, not just general statements, are needed. She suggested that the the 27-nation EU and the US could help drive the process.

“If the two of us take the lead with close friends, I think we can push something that will make us all much more comfortable with the fact that generative AI is now in the world and is developing at amazing speeds,” she said.

Worldwide concern

The U.S. and the European Union are not the only jurisdictions working on AI regulation. China’s Cyberspace Administration has already issued new regulations that ban the use of AI-generated content to spread “fake news.”

In Australia, Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said regulation is coming soon.

“There’s a sort of feeling in the community that they want to have the assurance … that the technology isn’t getting ahead of itself and it’s not being used in a way that creates disadvantage or risk for people,” he said, according to local media reports.

“That’s why the [federal government] wants to set up the next reforms that can give people confidence that we are curbing the risks and maximising the benefits.”

A Texas federal judge has ordered that AI-generated content should not be used to make arguments in court, and that such information must be declared and verified by a human.

Judge Brantley Starr’s ruling comes after one attorney, Steven Schwartz, last week allowed OpenAI’s ChatGPT to “supplement” his legal research by providing him with six cases and relevant precedent. All the cases were untrue and completely “hallucinated” by the chatbot.

Also read: ChatGPT’s Bogus Citations Land US Lawyer in Hot Water

The debacle received wide coverage, leaving Schwartz with “regrets.” Other lawyers who may have been contemplating trying the stunt now have to think twice, as Judge Starr has put an end to it.

Judge Starr also added a requirement that any attorney who appears in his courtroom declare that “no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence,” or if it was, that it was checked “by a human being.”

Judge Starr lays down the law

The eminent judge has set specific rules for his courtroom, just like other judges, and recently added the Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence.

This states that: “All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being.”

A form for lawyers to sign is appended, noting that “quotations, citations, paraphrased assertions and legal analysis are all covered by this proscription.”

According to a report by TechCrunch, summary is one of AI’s strong suits and finding and summarizing precedent or previous cases is something advertised as potentially helpful in legal work. As such, this ruling may be a major spanner in the works for AI.

The certification requirement includes a pretty well-informed and convincing explanation of its necessity.

It states that: “These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument.

“But legal briefing is not one of them. Here’s why.

“These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias,” reads part of the certification.

It further explains that on hallucinations, AI is prone to simply making stuff up – even quotes and citations. While another issue relates to reliability or bias.

Chatbots don’t swear an oath

The certification further notes that although attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative AI is the programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath.

In the case of Schwartz, he said in an affidavit that he was “unaware of the possibility that its (ChatGPT) content could be false.”

He added that he “greatly regrets” using the generative AI and will only “supplement” its use with absolute caution and validation in future, further claiming he had never used ChatGPT prior to this case.

The other side of ChatGPT

Launched last November, ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. The AI-powered chatbot is trained on billions of data sets from the internet and can perform a variety of tasks such as generating text and translating languages.

Despite going viral and provoking a fierce AI race, ChatGPT has its downsides – it can hallucinate and has misled Schwartz, who was representing Roberto Mata in a lawsuit against Colombian airline Avianca. Effectively, the chatbot provided citations to cases that did not exist.

Yet when Schwartz asked ChatGPT if one of the supposed cases was a real case, it responded “yes, (it) is a real case.” When asked for sources, the chatbot told Schwartz the case could be found “on legal research database such as Westlaw and LexisNexis.”

A lawyer used ChatGPT to do "legal research" and cited a number of nonexistent cases in a filing, and is now in a lot of trouble with the judge 🤣 pic.twitter.com/AJSE7Ts7W7

— Daniel Feldman (@d_feldman) May 27, 2023

The matter came to light after the opposing counsel flagged the ChatGPT-generated citations as fake.

US District Court Judge Kevin Castel confirmed six of them as non-existent and demanded an explanation from Schwartz.

“Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations,” wrote Judge Castel in a May 4 order.