During a Tuesday company-wide meeting, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo cautioned staff members that the owner of TikTok runs the risk of growing complacent and sinking into mediocrity as the company faces competition from younger startups.
Liang stated that the company’s recent rapid expansion has made it less efficient and that it has not given enough attention to artificial intelligence technology at a meeting in Singapore that was witnessed by ByteDance employees worldwide, according to a ByteDance post about the meeting on social media. Liang remarked, “Our company is not sensitive enough (to new technologies).” “GPT-1 was released in 2018, but discussions regarding GPT were not included in our half-year tech review until 2023.”
The machine learning method known as GPT is what gives OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot accuracy comparable to that of a human. Due to the powerful recommendation engines that power its main apps, including TikTok, Douyin, and Toutiao, ByteDance is sometimes regarded as the world’s top algorithmic firm.
However, the business—dubbed “App Factory” because of how frequently it creates mobile applications—has lagged behind in the AI race that is upending the tech industry.
Other Chinese internet billionaires, such as Pony Ma, the chairman of Tencent, and Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com, are also urging their companies to become more efficient and avoid complacency.
Liang noted that ByteDance was a latecomer to the AI foundation model game, pointing out that the more advanced businesses produced their models between 2018 and 2021.
“A lot of successful startup teams have extensive industry knowledge. Referring to the online repository for computer programs, “They can quickly spot any new projects appearing on GitHub, and then they start seeking acquisition or partnership opportunities,” he stated.
Liang noted that as the firm grew, ByteDance was experiencing an excessive amount of internal red tape, which was causing it to take six months to work on projects that a startup could finish in one month.
Recently, ByteDance has stepped up its focus on artificial intelligence while discontinuing several ventures, including video gaming. The business has been testing many AI-driven chatbots, including “Doubao” in China and “Cici” and “ChitChop” abroad. After news outlet The Verge revealed that ByteDance had developed its own artificial intelligence (AI) using OpenAI’s technology, the company’s AI plan came under criticism last month.
ByteDance claimed that using OpenAI’s service was lawful, but OpenAI stopped ByteDance’s account while it conducted an inquiry.
