SenseTime demos its large-language model, stock jumps

The large-language model boom, and, almost certainly, bubble, has begun.

China-based SenseTime, still fitful under United States sanctions, is riding a global wave of attention in the aftermath of its generative-AI announcements Monday. SenseTime claims to be one of the rare firms to have created chatbots and other automated algorithms.

Executives are working toward artificial general intelligence, a journey that some in IT feel is fraught with existential hazard.

SenseTime‘s new products are based on its SenseNova large language model. Company executives call their chatbot SenseChat.

The software company, best known for facial recognition and other machine vision products, last week telegraphed its announcements, giving share prices a gradual lift and then a meteoric trajectory. SenseTime stock went from trading around $2.65 at the end of March to above $3.30 on Thursday.

SenseTime also released an image generation product and other real-time AI applications.

According to the Reuters news agency, the company’s CEO, Xu Li, has held a live demonstration during which SenseChat reportedly scripted code, composed an email and told a story that was prompted by questions.

SenseTime is not the first player here, obviously. U.S.-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 has sparked the public’s imagination. And Baidu, also based in China, has a lesser-known model, called Ernie Bot, that was demonstrated in March.

Xu was quoted by the South China Morning Post saying business-to-business firms in China are going to adopt AI “fast,” followed by businesses selling to consumers. Baidu is owned by Alibaba, which also owns the Morning Post.

Some feel an AI could evolve exponentially and threaten human life before it can be shut off. Others have noted that already, the code has acted in ways that threaten individual privacy and copyrights.

Article Topics

AI  |  China  |  generative AI  |  SenseChat  |  SenseTime  |  stocks