How decades-old computing inputs in China set the stage for generative AI

What do decades-old Chinese computing inputs have to do with today’s biggest tech companies and generative AI? IT Brew recently caught up with Tom Mullaney, a sinologist, Stanford University professor of Chinese history, and author of The Chinese Computer, an upcoming book he spent 16 years working on. In the book, he outlines the many methods used to produce Chinese characters. The first and most basic component of Chinese computing—when it comes to these inputs and outputs—is that users “operate entirely in code all the time.”

To type out the phrase, “We like computers,” using the Sogou Pinyin method, for example, someone would use a standard QWERTY keyboard and use the input method editor to select the corresponding characters they wanted. So, “wm,” “xh,” and “dn” become the fully translated Simplified Chinese phrase: “我们喜欢电脑” after selection. In this way, people using inputs in Chinese think in code while typing out their sentences—as opposed to spelling something letter by letter with the Latin alphabet.

“From a practical standpoint, if it weren’t for all of the engineers and linguists I talked about in the book, basically modding and hacking and [creating] workarounds and bootstrapping, computing—there would be no Chinese computing market. Like, Microsoft and Apple would never have set a toe in the Chinese computing environment,” he told IT Brew.

On the connection to the IT industry:

“I think when you’re talking about programmers or coders, I think that is one area where globally, everyone is using what I call in the book, hypography, or a form of an input system,” he said.“So, I think that probably if you’re talking about the profession of programmers, and developers, I think probably everyone who really, really does this as a career uses an IDE [Integrated Development Environment], which is itself kind of an input environment.”

On the relation to AI:

The process of creating an input in China, Mullaney says, dates back to the ’40s and ’50s. “This way of interacting with computers absolutely explains and sets the stage for generative AI.”

He recalls when OpenAI released ChatGPT, which caused some to wonder what a prompt was and how they were supposed to refine it. “Chinese computing has been prompting and prompt engineering for 60 years,” he said. “Everybody is operating in a form of code. It’s not about secrecy—but it is code.”

On the impact on the West, and more specifically, the US:

China, he explains, led the process of globalization and localization as companies in the West adapted and eventually included Chinese language inputs.

“It wasn’t IBM or Apple that localized their own technologies to the Chinese-language market. It was this diffused global network of modders and hackers and computer scientists and engineers, who took this off-the-shelf stuff and then reimagined it in critical ways that suddenly opened up that market.”

Released by the MIT Press, The Chinese Computer will be available in bookstores worldwide May 28.