China launches LLM based on the Xi Jingping idea
China’s top internet regulator has developed a major language model based on President Xi Jinping’s political philosophy.
The model, reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, is said to be “safe and reliable,” and “the professionalism and authority of the corpus ensure the professional quality of the content generated.”
This corpus is drawn from the President’s personal commentary and instructions on social, economic and political life, known as the “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”
A direct line to the Xi Jinping idea
The LLM was developed by the China Cyberspace Research Institute as a closed model trained on selected approved materials to provide insight to those seeking Xi Jinping’s personal insight into their problems, or to explain reports and answer questions .
Dubbed the Great Firewall of China, the state is restricting access to the internet, leading to a proliferation of VPNs for China, and AI that does not adhere to strict guidelines and government controls to ensure answers are ideologically aligned near Beijing.
Although not currently available for public testing, the announcement suggested that users could consult the LLM for “a report on the current state of artificial intelligence development” or “to know the difference between new productivity and traditional productivity .”
China is trying to harness the power of AI to boost its economy, which has been rocked by a number of economic problems. Training LLMs requires advanced processors, which the US recently banned companies from selling to China. Unfortunately, recent research has shown that the chips are still making their way through China’s Great Chip Embargo.
According to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the LLM was “deployed exclusively on the servers of the China Cyberspace Research Institute, where all data is processed locally, ensuring a high level of security.”
Some LLMs are prone to expressing hallucinations or misinformation, so it is understandable that Beijing would want answers based on the personal philosophy of China’s paramount leader to be accurate in accordance with current state teachings.
Through S.C.M.P.