Chapter 267 Putting the Problem on the Table
"Next, let us invite Ms. Lin Jia, President of Light Armor Aerospace, to say a few words."

This can be considered the highlight of this press conference, and Lin Jia was invited to endorse it.

Baidu has named this time a moment of life and death. All unnecessary projects within the company are being cut and all efforts are focused on two product businesses.

One is an artificial intelligence search engine that competes with Hornbill AI, and the other is autonomous driving.

The former has little hope. Even if it is done, facing competition from Tencent, Baidu will not be able to return to its previous position of monopolizing the entire search engine industry.

Being able to share the entire market equally with Tencent is already the limit.

Tencent has a natural traffic entry point like WeChat, and it is difficult for Baidu to compete. The impact of its backwardness in the mobile Internet era has continued to this day.

The latter is considered by Baidu internally as the foundation for it to continue to maintain its position as a leading domestic Internet company.

Please come to the Linjia platform and cooperate with Guangjia Aerospace. This is a very critical step.

“Thank you Robin for sharing just now. Guangjia Aerospace is honored and excited to be able to explore a new future of autonomous driving with Baidu.

The progress of autonomous driving has been very rapid in the past few years, and Baidu's Carrot Run is the leading autonomous driving brand in the industry.

I admire Baidu's pursuit of excellence in technology. The cooperation between Baidu and Guangjia Aerospace to build the Tianqing optical satellite network will help Baidu's driverless cars further improve the user experience.

I have never experienced Robin Run before. I only saw it often in the news. This time Robin came to Shanghai to take me to experience it. The feeling it gave me was really close to that of a human driver.

There are still some shortcomings in terms of speed, target positioning, and logical judgment of the user's get-off location, but I believe that this judgment logic can be improved at a very fast speed with the support of the TianQing optical satellite network.

Guangjia Aerospace will be committed to helping companies engaged in autonomous driving across the country improve their technology level and help you build a satellite network through low-cost satellite launches."

In essence, the emergence of satellite networks can greatly reduce human intervention and reduce the labor costs of unmanned driving.

It is true that Baidu's Carrot Run is driverless now, but there are still a large number of employees in the background to monitor these driverless vehicles and manually take over any abnormal vehicles.

在2024年的时候，基本是保持着1个人监控3辆车的频率，进入到2026年之后，依然需要1个人监控3辆车。

Such labor costs plus the heavy assets of vehicles mean that it is impossible for Baidu to gain an advantage over traditional online ride-hailing services from the cost side.

Baidu has used Geely's satellite network to make calculations internally. If they have a complete satellite network, they can reduce the number of people to one person monitoring 1 vehicles, or even more.

You should know that Geely's satellite network only has three satellites, while Baidu plans to launch 3 micro-satellites. This is the explosive growth in number brought about by the reduction in launch costs, which creates an overwhelming advantage.

At the same time, with the construction of optical monitoring networks, the accuracy of unmanned driving will only get higher and higher.

The online car-hailing industry will usher in a complete disruption. For Baidu, building such a satellite network is not only for its own use, but also for selling real-time data to car companies and charging another fee.

The better the performance of Carrot & Rooster's unmanned driving, the more companies will be willing to buy TianQing's data, and the lower the cost of launching so many satellites will be.

Of course, Baidu can launch satellites, and so can other companies. Huawei is also in talks with Guangjia Aerospace.

Compared with Baidu, Huawei has even gone a step further and plans to acquire a satellite company to reduce launch costs.

Almost all companies that aspire to get a piece of the pie in the field of driverless cars are gearing up for the opportunity.

For capital, the most helpless thing is that Guangjia Aerospace is in the lead, which means that everyone knows that rocket launching is a good business, but there is only one company in the entire field that has monopolized the entire market.

Before the emergence of Huanguangjia Aerospace, there were a lot of companies in the entire market, and everyone was trying to share this piece of cake and work together to make the cake bigger.

It is true that the pie is getting bigger now. According to estimates by financial media, rocket launches can generate tens of billions of RMB in revenue throughout the year, and this is based on the premise that launch costs are greatly reduced.

But such a big piece of cake cannot be shared by everyone.

When AI was hyped up and at the center of the storm, a large number of artificial intelligence experts from Internet companies jumped out to start their own businesses and got huge amounts of money from investment institutions, and tens of millions were nothing.

But now, commercial spaceflight is showing signs of hope, and demand is constantly emerging. It is obvious that there is already a lot of revenue in the field of rocket launches, but investors don't even have the idea of ​​poaching experts from Light Armor Aerospace to start a business.

Because it is meaningless, some experts from China Aerospace who are engaged in rocket launches went to the market to inquire about the market conditions. When the investment institutions heard about it, they all asked in return, "What is your advantage over Guangjia Aerospace? How much money do you need to invest to catch up with Guangjia Aerospace?"
Two questions and you're dead.

Micro satellites are launched by the Shenzhou-Guangjia and large satellites by the Pioneer series.

There are also composite-powered satellites under development. The entire Mars launch market is silent. It is such a painful thing to watch the pie grow but not get a share of it.

Compared with the silence of rocket launches, the field of satellite research and development is very lively and has been the hottest track for domestic private equity investment since the second half of last year.

Hot money is pouring in rapidly.

"Mr. Lin, what you just said is very good. I also believe that once the satellite network is completed, China's unmanned driving technology will grow by leaps and bounds.

For example, when I took the Carrot Run, the get-off point was several hundred meters away from the actual place I wanted to go, and I still needed to walk for a while. This kind of problem can be solved by high-precision satellite constellations.

As Mr. Li just mentioned, the number of backend employees will also be greatly reduced, and one person will be able to monitor and take over two thousand, three thousand or even more driverless cars.

This includes removing the driver's seat and providing four seats. Through route planning, four passengers can be carried at a time, further reducing costs.

I think these are all very good. Such measures can reduce users' travel costs. I just have one question: how can we solve the unemployment problem caused by this?
The online ride-hailing industry has always been a reservoir of social employment. After the reservoir is removed, what should the middle-aged unemployment crisis do? "

This has been a problem that has always existed in the past. It caused widespread discussion after the launch of Carrot Run in 24 years. However, Carrot Run soon proved that its progress was not that fast and its impact on online ride-hailing services was limited. Slowly, this topic cooled down.

But now it is obvious that after the big players have gone out of business, the entire industry will accelerate in the future, and online ride-hailing services will be banned as fast as taxis. So this issue has been mentioned again and again.

At an artificial intelligence summit last year, Robin made a joke about this issue: "Why not eat meat?"

The reporter asked him how to solve the employment problem of online car-hailing drivers, and he said they could deliver food.

Afterwards, he was mocked by netizens, as if the delivery boy’s capacity was unlimited. Baidu’s reputation dropped again and fell through the floor.

This is also one of the reasons why users abandoned Baidu so quickly after Tencent came up with the Rhino AI. The majority of users have long been dissatisfied with Baidu. In the past, there were indeed no alternatives, but now there are alternatives that are better than you. The speed at which people abandon Baidu is much faster than Baidu itself estimated.

“I saw a journalist friend ask Robin this question last year. Robin said he could deliver food, but I don’t think so, because food delivery will be replaced by unmanned equipment sooner or later.

If driverless cars can be used in the online car-hailing industry, then they can definitely be used in other fields. Food delivery is essentially also a form of transportation.

I also don’t think that the emergence of new technologies will create new jobs, and that new jobs can solve problems.

For those who can drive online ride-hailing vehicles, the employment opportunities brought by artificial intelligence are not a match for the vast majority of people in this group.

This will be an even more cruel process when online ride-hailing replaces taxis. Online ride-hailing replaces taxis, and everyone can drive an online ride-hailing car. However, driverless cars will replace online ride-hailing cars with such high efficiency that one person can be responsible for thousands of driverless cars. The number of jobs provided by the entire travel industry will be reduced by thousands of times.

Such technological progress is very cruel to them. I don’t think companies can solve such problems, and I don’t think this responsibility should be left to companies to solve.”

After Lin Jia finished speaking, there was an uproar in the audience. In China, it is very rare to separate corporate social responsibility. Even Jack Ma did not dare to say so when he was interviewed.

Whenever Jack Ma was interviewed, he said that Ant Group must shoulder its social responsibilities and help funds circulate faster.

Remarks like Lin Jia's are not a problem in European and American countries, but are absolutely taboo in China.

Robin, who was sitting next to her, turned green.

"I think this is a problem that the government should solve, but I don't think companies have no responsibility. Guangjia Aerospace will donate 10 billion RMB to set up a charity fund to provide free training for online car-hailing drivers and help them make the transition."

Making up for it like this will make the situation different, and everyone will find your words much more pleasant to hear.

“In fact, you shouldn’t have said that. Why bother saying that it’s the government’s responsibility and that companies can’t solve such problems?

There's no need to mention this, just say that Guangjia Aerospace is willing to donate money to help online ride-hailing drivers make the transition.

I won’t be scolded on the Internet again.” Chen Yuanguang felt sorry for Lin Jia.

Marrying him caused Lin Jia to suffer tremendous pressure from public opinion.

To some extent he is a flawless God, then everyone around God will be victims of public opinion.

“Actually, I don’t have to say anything, but if I don’t, that would be really irresponsible. If I don’t say anything, the government will be absent and no one will care about their lives.

What I said will make everyone discuss this matter. Regardless of whether everyone agrees with my point of view or not, it will definitely be put on the public opinion field and discussed as a very serious issue.

Whenever new technologies bring about a bad employment environment, the blame is directed at businesses.

Why did taxis suffer a crushing defeat as soon as online ride-hailing services appeared? People would think that it was because of the poor service of taxis, their refusal to pick up passengers and their poor service attitude, and all kinds of problems kept popping up.

But if we trace it further, we will find that the taxi license is equivalent to a franchise, and a franchise with a particularly high price. The drivers are also an exploited group, and after being exploited, they pass their grievances on to the passengers.

After taxis were replaced by online ride-hailing services, the group that benefited from the sale of franchises did not stand up to take responsibility for the unemployment and decreased income of these people.

The benefits and responsibilities are not equal, and no one in the public opinion field is pointing the finger at them.

Why are ordinary people always the ones who get hurt? Why is the whole public opinion environment always a mutual harm between ordinary people and enterprises? The group that should bear the responsibility always disappears.

Shenhai Pudong Airport only allows one company, Airport Travel, to accept orders for online ride-hailing vehicles, and no other online ride-hailing vehicles are allowed to enter. The matter was investigated but nothing came of it.

This time, it is not just the online ride-hailing business at Pudong Airport that will be affected by driverless cars, but the entire online ride-hailing drivers, a total of six million employed people.

This responsibility should be borne by enterprises, and no enterprise can bear such a responsibility."

Lin Jia finally sighed: "I thought I could be willful while I can. If I don't say this, then no one will say this, and no one will discuss this.

In the end, it became a conflict between the company and the unemployed drivers.”

Chen Yuanguang understood Lin Jia. If he were in Lin Jia's shoes, he would probably say something similar. At least he would put things on the table.

"If that's the case, then I think you did the right thing."

Lin Jia shook his head: "I didn't do anything, I just made everyone aware of the problem and put it on the table for discussion.

I don’t know whether it can be resolved in the end.”

Lin Jia went on to say: "In the past few years, China's technology has developed very rapidly, and from the perspective of global competition, we are gaining more and more advantages.

I have read some history and have done some thinking. I know that America was once so powerful, but now it is no longer like a country compared to its current state of decline.

It has only been more than 30 years since they were so powerful. I have a vague feeling that we are becoming like the American elites who ignore the interests of the grassroots.

(End of this chapter)