The Rise of Chinese AI: Zhipu AI’s Ambitious Pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence
As the world watches OpenAI’s Sora, a revolutionary text-to-video generator, Chinese companies are not far behind. Beijing-based Zhipu AI, a pioneer in large language models (LLMs), is developing Sora-like technology to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). This ambitious pursuit is a testament to China’s determination to catch up with US advancements in the field.
“About the advent of Sora, first we’re not surprised, second we’re also working on [similar technology],” Zhang Peng, chief executive of Zhipu AI, said in a recent interview.
Zhang commended Sora’s multi-modal capabilities as “very state-of-the-art” and acknowledged the current technological gap between Sora and similar Chinese efforts. “Sora has experienced progressive enhancement, there’s still a gap between [it] and us and we need to keep working hard,” Zhang emphasized.
Zhipu AI’s relentless pursuit of AGI
Founded in 2019 by a group of computer science research fellows at Tsinghua University, Zhipu AI has been backed by prominent Chinese tech companies and venture capital firms, including Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, and Xiaomi. The company’s answer to ChatGPT, called ChatGLM, was released last March and was among the first batch of generative AI services approved for public release by the Chinese government.
ChatGLM, Zhipu AI’s response to ChatGPT
Despite the restrictions on foreign chatbots in China, Zhang is hopeful about future collaboration with foreign firms on AI technologies and is eyeing overseas markets. “Going global is a very important strategy… for us as a Chinese company, going outside [of China] would be a very important milestone,” Zhang said.
Zhipu AI’s global ambitions
As the AI landscape continues to evolve, one thing is certain – China is not far behind in the race to achieve AGI. With companies like Zhipu AI pushing the boundaries of innovation, the future of AI looks brighter than ever.
The future of AI: limitless possibilities
