(VOR News) – Three sources acquainted with the matter have revealed that ByteDance, the Chinese parent firm of TikTok, plans to build an artificial intelligence model that will be trained mostly with processors from Huawei Technologies in response to restrictions imposed by the United States.
This occurs while the massive social media platform is searching China for CPUs.
ByteDance has expanded its business to include domestic suppliers of chips used in artificial intelligence and has accelerated the development of its own processors since 2022, when the United States started limiting exports of potent AI chips, such as those made by market leader NVIDIA.
In the tech sector, artificial intelligence has become a vital component. Custom AI models—computer programs that utilise pattern recognition to make decisions—are being used by businesses in a variety of industries, such as gaming and e-commerce, to differentiate their goods and services.
The people who want to remain anonymous said that ByteDance’s next move in the competition for artificial intelligence will be to employ Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip to train a large-language AI model.
This is because the proposal involves ByteDance confidential information.
A fourth person claims that ByteDance also plans to create a new AI model, although they were unable to clarify if this model will incorporate Huawei processors or not.
ByteDance is already using the Ascend 910B to handle less computationally demanding inference tasks. Based on information from three different sources and pre-trained artificial intelligence models, these activities provide predictions.
Artificial intelligence model training is much more complex and requires massive amounts of data. Consequently, ultra-high-performance CPUs—like the high-end graphics processing units provided by Nvidia—must be used.
One of the people claims that the new model’s complexity and capabilities, which will be determined by its computational properties, will be inferior to those of ByteDance’s current artificial intelligence model, Doubao.
In response to a request for comment, ByteDance remained silent. Speaking on behalf of ByteDance, Michael Hughes, a TikTok representative in Washington, District of Columbia, stated that “the entire idea behind this is incorrect.” For the model, nothing novel is being created.
A LIMITED AMOUNT
One of the people claims that although ByteDance ordered over 100,000 Ascend 910B chips this year, the company had only gotten less than 30,000 of them as of July. This rate is not fast enough to suit the company’s needs.
Two of the individuals claim that ByteDance has been unable to set a timeframe for the new model because of a number of issues, such as low availability compared to Nvidia’s processors that are available in China and insufficient processing capacity.
ByteDance uses the most recent artificial intelligence technologies in its flagship large-language model, chatbot Doubao, which was redesigned and unveiled in August 2023. It is also used in a great deal of other applications, such as Jimeng, a text-to-video tool. This month, it unveiled two video-focused Doubao models in an effort to compete with OpenAI.
The amount of people using these kinds of apps has increased dramatically since the start of this year. ByteDance’s chatbot, which has over 10 million monthly active users, has become one of the most popular apps in China.
The three people claim that because of the growing focus on artificial intelligence (AI), ByteDance has grown to be one of Huawei’s biggest users of AI chips.
Furthermore, two of the people claim that it is the biggest buyer of NVIDIA’s H20 AI processor, which the US chipmaker customised for the Chinese market in reaction to trade restrictions. Two distinct sources claim that TikTok’s parent firm is also Microsoft’s most significant Asian customer for NVIDIA chips that are available via cloud computing.
A prior Reuters story claimed that ByteDance had budgeted $2 billion for NVIDIA processors the year before. NVIDIA declined to provide a statement. Microsoft declined to respond even after being contacted for one. Huawei declined to respond to Reuters’ requests for comments.
SOURCE: DN
SEE ALSO:
China’s Reticence on the U.S. TikTok Prohibition is Highly Indicative.
Apple and Meta Refuse to Sign the EU’s New AI Safety Agreement.
