China has issued new guidelines on obstetric AI services, limiting their general use while encouraging industrial development.
Reuters reported that China’s Cyber Department (CAC) eased its position against the draft rules in April, and these new interim regulations will come into effect on August 15 and the guidance only impacts organizations that provide generational AI services to the public, and other entities that are developing the same technology but not for mass market use are not in the measures.
The rules retain some wording from April’s proposal, including continuing to mandate obstetric AI services that must “commit to the core values of socialism” and not attempt to oust state power or the socialist system, and CNN reported that the new rules removed potential fines of up to 100,000 yuan ($13,999) for violations.
China was looking for ways to enhance its generating AI offerings and hoped to become the leading provider, to defeat the current dominance of the United States.
But this was not easy for China, a country known for controlling internet access and the spread of information within its borders. The government told its technology giants not to access ChatGPT for fear that the auto chat program would provide “unsupervised responses,” even though the tool is not available in China. Authorities also campaigned against citizens using ChatGPT, arresting a man who allegedly used the chat program to write fake articles, according to theverge.
Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Bido are now developing their own obstetric AI tools and Bido offered a first look at their Ernie chatbot earlier this year, but the launch has raised investor concerns.
China’s obstetric AI rules also consider the importance of intellectual property rights to training data and prohibit the use of “algorithms, data, platforms and other advantages to enforce monopoly and unfair competition”. All training data must come from sources deemed legitimate by the government. Providers must accept individual requests to review or correct information collected for AI models.
The Chinese government said it would encourage the development of obstetric AI, including infrastructure support and public training.
China, of course, is not the only country trying to balance innovation in obstetric AI with public safety. The EU is still discussing its own AI law, while the Biden administration has developed a plan to support the development of AI. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into OpenAI of the manufacturer of ChatGPT this week looking for potential harm to consumers.
