Taipei, Taiwan – Chinese search engine giant Baidu has revealed its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Ernie, the latest rival to OpenAI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT.
Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li said on Thursday that Ernie, known as Weixin in Chinese, was the result of “decades of Baidu’s hard work and efforts” at a livestreamed press conference held to show off the technology’s capabilities.
“In two rounds of conversation, the Ernie bot presented its capability of mathematical logic reasoning,” Li said. “It does not only know whether the question itself is correct or not, it also provided answers and specific steps to figure out the answer.”
At the event in Beijing, Li showed Ernie generating a conference poster and video based on a prompt, offering advice on the best location for the event among several Chinese cities, and reading material in a Sichuan dialect.
Li also showed the bot answering questions about a popular Chinese science fiction novel and summarising the book’s plot.
Li said that the features, which will be integrated into Baidu’s Xiaodu smart device ecosystem, will be initially only available to a limited number of users with an Ernie invitation code.
The bot performs better in Chinese compared with English and can struggle with questions that contain logical errors, Li said, although it can identify when something is wrong.
Unlike OpenAI’s demonstrations of ChatGPT, Baidu did not demonstrate Ernie’s capabilities live but instead through a series of slides. The chatbot also lacks functions unveiled in the follow-up to Chat GPT, GPT-4, such as the ability to generate text in response to an image.
Ernie’s launch was poorly received by investors, with Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares falling more than 10 per cent during the pre-recorded demonstration.
“There is still a lot of uncertainty around Ernie’s capacity, especially given the lack of a live demo – a stark contrast to OpenAI’s GPT-4’s developer livestream a few days ago,” Chim Lee, a China tech analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera.
“Robin Li did not demonstrate Ernie’s capacity in a non-Chinese language environment,” Lee added. “He also admitted that Ernie’s capacity to comprehend and process English is not as good as that of Chinese comprehension. This puts it behind ChatGPT, which is able to generate responses in English, Chinese and other languages.”
Baidu’s announcement comes just a day after Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, which the San Francisco-based company says is capable of “human-level performance” in certain academic areas, including the ability to pass the bar exam for prospective lawyers with a score in the top 10 percent of applicants.
Li said his “expectations for Ernie bot are closer to ChatGPT or even GPT4″ and praised Baidu for launching the bot ahead of competitors such as Google and Facebook parent company Meta.
More than 650 organisations in China have plans to use Ernie, including China CITIC Bank, the National Museum of China and the Global Times newspaper, Li said.
The Chinese government has pledged to support local AI developers and integrate the technology across Chinese industry.
Local tech giants including Alibaba, Huawei and JD.com have announced plans to bring out their own chatbots.
Beijing’s strict internet controls, though, have raised doubts about how AI-powered chatbots will operate in China given the technology’s reliance on information scrapped from sources online.
Still, Ernie could find some success in China due to restrictions on OpenAI’s bots in the country, Lee said.
“Chinese technology companies have a strong capacity in finding working business models for new technologies,” he said.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says wholesale sales, excluding petroleum, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons and excluding oilseed and grain, rose 0.4 per cent to $82.7 billion in July.
The increase came as sales in the miscellaneous subsector gained three per cent to reach $10.5 billion in July, helped by strength in the agriculture supplies industry group, which rose 9.2 per cent.
The food, beverage and tobacco subsector added 1.7 per cent to total $15 billion in July.
The personal and household goods subsector fell 2.5 per cent to $12.1 billion.
In volume terms, overall wholesale sales rose 0.5 per cent in July.
Statistics Canada started including oilseed and grain as well as the petroleum and petroleum products subsector as part of wholesale trade last year, but is excluding the data from monthly analysis until there is enough historical data.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VICTORIA – British Columbia is forecasting a record budget deficit and a rising debt of almost $129 billion less than two weeks before the start of a provincial election campaign where economic stability and future progress are expected to be major issues.
Finance Minister Katrine Conroy, who has announced her retirement and will not seek re-election in the Oct. 19 vote, said Tuesday her final budget update as minister predicts a deficit of $8.9 billion, up $1.1 billion from a forecast she made earlier this year.
Conroy said she acknowledges “challenges” facing B.C., including three consecutive deficit budgets, but expected improved economic growth where the province will start to “turn a corner.”
The $8.9 billion deficit forecast for 2024-2025 is followed by annual deficit projections of $6.7 billion and $6.1 billion in 2026-2027, Conroy said at a news conference outlining the government’s first quarterly financial update.
Conroy said lower corporate income tax and natural resource revenues and the increased cost of fighting wildfires have had some of the largest impacts on the budget.
“I want to acknowledge the economic uncertainties,” she said. “While global inflation is showing signs of easing and we’ve seen cuts to the Bank of Canada interest rates, we know that the challenges are not over.”
Conroy said wildfire response costs are expected to total $886 million this year, more than $650 million higher than originally forecast.
Corporate income tax revenue is forecast to be $638 million lower as a result of federal government updates and natural resource revenues are down $299 million due to lower prices for natural gas, lumber and electricity, she said.
Debt-servicing costs are also forecast to be $344 million higher due to the larger debt balance, the current interest rate and accelerated borrowing to ensure services and capital projects are maintained through the province’s election period, said Conroy.
B.C.’s economic growth is expected to strengthen over the next three years, but the timing of a return to a balanced budget will fall to another minister, said Conroy, who was addressing what likely would be her last news conference as Minister of Finance.
The election is expected to be called on Sept. 21, with the vote set for Oct. 19.
“While we are a strong province, people are facing challenges,” she said. “We have never shied away from taking those challenges head on, because we want to keep British Columbians secure and help them build good lives now and for the long term. With the investments we’re making and the actions we’re taking to support people and build a stronger economy, we’ve started to turn a corner.”
Premier David Eby said before the fiscal forecast was released Tuesday that the New Democrat government remains committed to providing services and supports for people in British Columbia and cuts are not on his agenda.
Eby said people have been hurt by high interest costs and the province is facing budget pressures connected to low resource prices, high wildfire costs and struggling global economies.
The premier said that now is not the time to reduce supports and services for people.
Last month’s year-end report for the 2023-2024 budget saw the province post a budget deficit of $5.035 billion, down from the previous forecast of $5.9 billion.
Eby said he expects government financial priorities to become a major issue during the upcoming election, with the NDP pledging to continue to fund services and the B.C. Conservatives looking to make cuts.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the debt would be going up to more than $129 billion. In fact, it will be almost $129 billion.
NANAIMO, B.C. – Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says he’ll be advising the Liberal party to flip some the challenges posed by an increasingly divided and dangerous world into an economic opportunity for Canada.
But he won’t say what his specific advice will be on economic issues that are politically divisive in Canada, like the carbon tax.
He presented his vision for the Liberals’ economic policy at the party’s caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C. today, after he agreed to help the party prepare for the next election as chair of a Liberal task force on economic growth.
Carney has been touted as a possible leadership contender to replace Justin Trudeau, who has said he has tried to coax Carney into politics for years.
Carney says if the prime minister asks him to do something he will do it to the best of his ability, but won’t elaborate on whether the new adviser role could lead to him adding his name to a ballot in the next election.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she has been taking advice from Carney for years, and that his new position won’t infringe on her role.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
