OpenAI has published a report about ChatGPT users, who it says were likely based in China, that used the chatbot to plan a campaign designed to sway Americans’ opinions about AI data centers.
It divided the users into two clusters, the first of which it had designated the “Data Center Bandwagon” group. Accounts categorized in the group allegedly asked ChatGPT to generate English-language talking points and images, such as comic strips, which focus on how AI data centers drive up demand in electricity and how that leads to higher bills for consumers.
The company says these users posed as Americans from a variety of backgrounds on social media, where they had posted the text and image output they got from ChatGPT. OpenAI believes they’re part of a social media team at a private Chinese company working for local government clients. They apparently even uploaded a file to the chatbot describing their objectives and strategies on how to sway public opinion and how to establish fake social media accounts without getting detected.
That’s literally what their goal is, yes.
I do not understand people who think everything that is happening in international politics is all at the surface level.
This type of action is one of the modern evolutions of war. China absolutely wants dominance in AI, they know how powerful a tool/weapon it can be. They will happily fund propaganda in other countries to improve their odds of winning the race.
Their infrastructure investments into other countries that give them leverage over resources, propping up Russia against Ukraine, hosting North Korean cyber espionage groups, threatening Taiwan, buying up companies, international real estate. The list goes on and on.
China has it’s fingers in everything. They want to become THE world superpower. They know they can’t fight their way to the top with military might anytime in the near future, so they’re investing in damaging the capabilities of western countries and propping up their own influence.
They’re actually doing a pretty good job of it too.
I’m sure the western countries are trying to do the same to China, but it’s hard to influence the Chinese population directly when China locked down most of the communications channels internally. They aren’t stupid.
How does it benefit China to have all the data centres? It’s literally doesn’t matter where they are built.
Capacity = capability. It allows them to build better models and run inference.
Other than openai and anthropic, all of the other top models right now are Chinese. That’s just the ones we know about too.
The US datacenters aren’t going to be selling capacity to the Chinese government and military.