DeepSeek has rattled the AI industry. Here's a quick look at other Chinese AI models
Hong Kong (AP): DeepSeek's emergence has raised concerns that China may have overtaken the US in the artificial intelligence race despite restrictions on its access to the most advanced chips. It's just one of many Chinese companies working on AI, with a goal of making China the world leader in the field by 2030 and besting the US in their battle for technological supremacy.
Like the US, China is investing billions into artificial intelligence. Last week, it created a 60 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) AI investment fund, days after the US imposed fresh chip export restrictions.
Beijing has also invested heavily in the semiconductor industry to build its capacity to make advanced computer chips, working to overcome limits on its access to those of industry leaders. Companies are offering talent programs and subsidies, and there are plans to open AI academies and introduce AI education into primary and secondary school curriculums.
China has established regulations governing AI, addressing safety, privacy and ethics. Its ruling Communist Party also controls the kinds of topics the AI models can tackle: DeepSeek shapes its responses to fit those limits.
Here's an overview of some other leading AI models in China.
-Alibaba Cloud's Qwen-2.5-1M
Alibaba Cloud's Qwen-2.5-1M is the e-commerce giant's open-source AI series. It contains large language models that can easily handle extremely long questions, and engage in longer and deeper conversations. Its ability to understand complex tasks such as reasoning, dialogues and comprehending code is improving.
Like its rivals, Alibaba Cloud has a chatbot released for public use called Qwen - also known as Tongyi Qianwen in China. Alibaba Cloud's suite of AI models, such as the Qwen2.5 series, has mostly been deployed for developers and business customers such as automakers, banks, video game makers and retailers as part of product development and shaping customer experiences.
-Baidu's Ernie Bot 4.0
Ernie Bot, developed by Baidu, China's dominant search engine, was the first AI chatbot made publicly available in China. Baidu said it released the model publicly to be able to collect massive real-world human feedback to build its capacity.
Ernie Bot 4.0 had more than 300 million users as of June 2024. Similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, users of Ernie Bot are able to ask it questions and have it generate images based on text prompts.
-ByteDance's Doubao 1.5 Pro
Doubao 1.5 Pro is an AI model released by TikTok's parent company ByteDance last week. Doubao is currently one of the most popular AI chatbots in China, with 60 million monthly active users.
ByteDance says the Doubao 1.5 Pro is better than ChatGPT-4o at retaining knowledge, coding, reasoning, and Chinese language processing. According to ByteDance, the model is also cost-efficient and requires lower hardware costs compared to other large language models because Doubao uses a highly-optimized architecture that balances performance with reduced computational demands.
-Moonshot AI's Kimi k1.5
Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based startup valued at over $3 billion after its latest fundraising round. It says its recently released Kimi k1.5 matches or outperforms the OpenAI o1 model, which is designed to spend more time thinking before it responds and can solve harder and more complex problems.
Moonshot claims that Kimi outperforms OpenAI o1 in mathematics, coding, and ability to comprehend both text and visual inputs such as photos and video.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
ALSO READ: IndiGo cancels over 200 flights from Delhi, Mumbai on Saturday
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
