Almost six years ago, a Google computer program toppled the best player in China — and the world — at Go, an ancient Chinese board game. The defeat catalyzed China's revolution in artificial intelligence. Beijing unrolled a monumental A.I. plan, and investors poured record sums into new projects.
大约六年前，谷歌研发的计算机程序在围棋这一古老的中国棋类游戏上击败了中国（同时也是全世界）最好的棋手。那次败北催生了中国在人工智能领域的革命。北京推出了一项意义重大的人工智能发展规划，投资者向各种新项目注入了前所未有的资金。
Now, a similar moment has arrived: The rise of ChatGPT has kicked off another A.I. arms race, this time in the realm of machine-generated content. On Thursday, China's first major rival to ChatGPT was unveiled in Beijing by the search giant Baidu. But the debut of the bot, dubbed Ernie, was a flop.
而今，相似的场面已经上演：ChatGPT的风靡引发了另一场人工智能竞赛，这次是在机器生成内容领域。周四，中国搜索巨头百度在北京揭开了中国首款ChatGPT主要竞品的面纱，但这款名为“文心一言”(Ernie)的机器人首次亮相就以失败告终。
Halfway through a demonstration that had been marketed as live, in which Ernie summarized a science fiction novel and analyzed a Chinese idiom, Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive, said the presentation had been prerecorded “to save time.”
在被宣传为现场直播的演示中，“文心一言”总结了一部科幻小说，并分析了一句中国成语，但演示进行到一半，百度首席执行官李彦宏表示，为了“节约时间”，这些展示是预先录制的。
Baidu's shares plunged 10 percent in Hong Kong, a striking contrast to the rally earlier this year that was fueled by the company's announcement that it has had a rival to ChatGPT in the works since 2019.
百度在香港的股价暴跌10%，与今年早些时候的涨势形成鲜明对比，当时该公司宣称从2019年起就已在研发ChatGPT的竞品。
The botched rollout comes as the likes of Baidu and Google rush to catch up with ChatGPT, whose maker released a new version this week. It was also a sign that China still has work to do to catch up with the United States in A.I., a race that has only intensified in recent years as relations between the two countries have deteriorated. As Washington has moved to contain competition from China, it has cut Beijing off from high-end computing chips — a key ingredient in technologies like ChatGPT and Ernie.
在这场产品发布弄巧成拙之时，百度和谷歌等企业正急于追赶ChatGPT，其开发者本周发布了新的版本。百度的失败还表明，在人工智能领域，中国仍落后于美国，随着近年来两国关系的恶化，这场竞赛已愈演愈烈。因为美国采取措施遏制来自中国的竞争，中国获取高端计算机芯片的途径已被切断，而这种芯片正是ChatGPT和“文心一言”等技术的关键组成部分。
Because of enormous computing requirements, only a handful of companies, most based in either the United States or China, have the capacity to build bots that rely on what are known as large language models. Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
由于巨大的计算需求，只有少数几家公司有能力研发依赖于所谓大语言模型的机器人，这些公司大多位于美国或中国。微软已向ChatGPT开发者OpenAI投入了数十亿美元。
Baidu's bot, whose name comes from Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, will be open to some users starting Thursday.
百度这款机器人的英文版名字来源于“通过知识整合增强表达”，机器人从周四开始面向部分用户开放。
Ernie, Mr. Li insisted, was not a “tool for Sino-U.S. technology competition.” But he also acknowledged that ChatGPT's success had accelerated the timeline for Baidu's rollout.
李彦宏坚称，“文心一言”不是“中美科技对抗的工具”。但他也承认，ChatGPT的成功加快了百度推出该产品的进度。