Chapter 286: After many twists and turns, it’s still about giving money
Pony's third video finally caused a sensation. The new version of Hornbill is called shopping software. Judging from the effects demonstrated in the video, it can be used as a productivity tool.

It is actually able to negotiate on behalf of people and complete the negotiations smoothly. This feeling of horror is comparable to when ChatGPT knew to hire people to help it complete the task.

Almost all social media are talking about the new version of Hornbill and the impact it may have on Chinese society.

Obviously, manufacturers such as Alibaba, Pinduoduo, and JD.com cannot sit idly by and wait to suffer the same fate as Baidu.

They are well aware that waging a war of public opinion on such matters is ineffective. To put it bluntly, no matter how hard you waging a war of public opinion, the impact on policy will be minimal.

They mobilized almost all the forces they could to convince decision makers that this thing was too radical.

It is so radical that it will completely destroy the current business environment in China.

"Ali has never denied that we need to vigorously develop artificial intelligence and lead the world in this field.

However, the new generation of Hornbill is a completely black box. It is unknown what kind of decisions artificial intelligence will make, and we have not systematically assessed its risks."

All Internet companies related to online shopping were invited to the meeting in Yanjing, and the Chinese side also wanted to hear everyone's opinions.

From the government to the private sector, China's application of artificial intelligence is absolutely radical enough. For example, driverless cars cannot be promoted in California, but can be promoted in Jiangcheng.

However, it is impossible to completely ignore the overwhelming opinions from these private pillar enterprises.

And they do have a point.

The content of Alibaba’s representative’s speech was basically the same, nothing more than data security, the threat of artificial intelligence, the technology being in the hands of Malaysian companies, it being a complete black box, etc.

There are many such analyses on the Internet, and the level of analysis is similar to that of Zhihu bloggers.

These are not enough to convince decision-makers.

“Yes, what Mr. Cai just mentioned makes a lot of sense.

But there is one thing: the new generation of Hornbills are already beginning to imitate human thinking.

It is different from generative artificial intelligence such as GPT. It is no longer just an integrated analysis of data. We strongly suspect that the new generation of Hornbills has emerged on a large scale and is already generating intelligence.

In the past two years, Alpha Technology has been the most aggressive company in purchasing computing power. The total computing power of graphics cards they purchased from Nvidia and Huawei is more than that of Google and Microsoft combined.

If we don’t keep up, we’re going to lose the AI ​​race completely.”

This is the key to success. Whoever develops true artificial intelligence first and reaches the singularity in technological research and development will gain unprecedented advantages in future technological competition.

Therefore, the problems mentioned by Ali will not become an obstacle.

China's pursuit of technological progress is unimaginable for other countries.

"Is there any way we can get Alpha to transfer its technology?" It was obvious that the host of the meeting was very interested.

“It’s impossible, no company would transfer this kind of technology.

We mentioned this during our communication with Alpha, but they did not agree.

Therefore, Tencent needs to promote the next generation of Hornbill on a large scale and rely on the accumulated data to cultivate China's own truly thinking artificial intelligence.

If we stand still simply because it is a black box and because of data security, then we will fall behind in the AI ​​race.

I don't know if anyone here has been paying attention to the American media in recent days. Microsoft is also going to introduce a new generation of Hornbill and is also conducting large-scale testing.

There are many rumors about the next generation of Hornbill on American social media, and mainstream media are also reporting on it, but this time no American media mentioned data security, and no mainstream media mentioned the threat theory of artificial intelligence.

Their focus is on why Malaysia is ahead of America in the field of artificial intelligence and what Silicon Valley companies need to do to catch up.

Except for a few professors who are still expressing concerns about the threat of artificial intelligence, no one cares about it anymore. They are all thinking about how to catch up in the field of artificial intelligence.

How far is artificial intelligence from thinking about single linear problems to thinking more broadly?

America is not worried about what Mr. Cai just said, so we don’t need to worry about it now either.

This is like worrying about unbalanced nutrition before even having a meal." Pony's response was equally sharp.

It is impossible for Tencent to give up the opportunity to promote the new generation of Hornbill.

As we all know, Tencent seized two opportunities: chat software in the PC era and WeChat in the smartphone era.

In the era of artificial intelligence, Tencent has also grabbed half a ticket through investment, but this is far from enough.

If general artificial intelligence emerges, the current advantages will disappear instantly like a sand castle on the beach.

Therefore, Tencent believes that it has an advantage in data with the support of the Chinese and even global markets. At the same time, compared with other competitors, they have the input and output data sets of the new generation of Hornbill. It is not difficult to replicate artificial intelligence similar to the new generation of Hornbill based on specific data sets.

Under such circumstances, Tencent would not be able to accept being banned from promoting the new generation of Hornbill due to data risks.

"Taobao just mentioned the issue of safety, and we want to raise the issue of employment.

The capabilities demonstrated by the new generation of Hornbills will further cause an avalanche in the entire job market.

Customer service, sales, channels, etc. It seems that it only takes two steps for goods to go from production to the hands of consumers, but in fact it is a very long chain that involves many companies, and artificial intelligence will dismantle the nodes on these chains one by one.

It is an even more devastating blow to the offline business ecosystem.

We need to think seriously about whether our society is ready for such a big shock.”

This is Pinduoduo’s statement.

Mark really wants to complain, aren’t you e-commerce companies the first to eliminate these middle chains?

“I’m sorry, but any new technology is not always smooth sailing. It will bring about industrial revolution and cause a huge impact.

While some jobs will disappear, some jobs will also be created.

I think it’s a bit ridiculous that e-commerce platforms accuse the new generation of Hornbills of destroying the offline business ecosystem.

Isn’t e-commerce the first to kill offline business?

E-commerce companies have launched a product identification function called scanning codes. When users see a product they like in an offline store, they can simply take a photo with their mobile phone to complete the identification and the product will pop up.

The price advantage of online products will make consumers refuse to buy in offline stores without hesitation.

When you were developing similar functions, why didn’t you consider the damage to the offline business ecosystem? I think this is a process of choosing the lesser of two evils. Compared with lagging behind in the era of artificial intelligence, the impact caused is just a pain. Judging from the complex ecology of the Chinese economy, it will eventually reach a new dynamic balance. ”

“I think this is a very contradictory thing, and both sides have very strong arguments.

In fact, the development of artificial intelligence in recent years and the replacement of human jobs did not start with driverless cars. The first large-scale ban was in unmanned ports.

Whether it is unmanned ports or smart factories built using the industrial Internet, they have led to a large number of workers losing their jobs.

Huawei has been working on industrial artificial intelligence for many years, so you should know about it, and leaders in related fields should also know about it.”

As a director of Alpha Technology, Lin Jia was also invited to attend the meeting.

“In the past, this group of people lacked a voice channel, and the unemployment problem caused by industrial AI was a small-scale event, so it received limited attention.

Later, as the size of this group of people expanded, discussions about the unemployment wave also focused on the overall economic environment, and no one realized that artificial intelligence was also a very important factor.

We can clearly see that not only Internet companies are working on artificial intelligence, but many real industries are also working on artificial intelligence. The most typical case should be the textile industry.

According to Alpha's quarterly report, they are helping Adidas build an unmanned factory in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

Later, I paid special attention to the artificial intelligence factories in the textile industry, and I was surprised to find that as early as 2015, Heilan Home had established a company called Heilan Zhiyun, which specializes in industrial AI in the textile industry.

Last year, Heilan Home's AI factory shortened the production cycle of customized suits on the e-commerce platform from 21 days to 3 days.

This is equivalent to shortening the time by 7 times. The improvement in efficiency will inevitably lead to many workers losing their jobs.

Because I am from Hangzhou, before attending this meeting, I went out of my way to ask people about it. I found out that many industrial workers in the textile industry in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai have been replaced by factory AI.

We can clearly see that the cost of using artificial intelligence is not as high as the media claims, and the threshold is not as high as everyone imagines.

The large-scale application of artificial intelligence in the textile industry means that it will be used in more fields in the future.

In recent years, more and more manufacturing companies have been upgrading based on artificial intelligence technology. Artificial intelligence is constantly squeezing out jobs.

This is a very significant phenomenon.

We are not talking about whether Tencent can replicate Alpha Technologies’ technology. I don’t know whether Tencent can do it.

But what I can be sure of is that in the process of Tencent or Microsoft reproducing the new generation of Hornbill technology, many valuable results will emerge. After these valuable results are open sourced, they will accelerate the surge of the artificial intelligence wave.

The speed at which companies are replacing human jobs, especially the jobs of the lower-level population, through artificial intelligence will become increasingly faster. I don’t think the speed at which new jobs are created can keep up with the speed of AI replacement.

Combined with the development of photovoltaic technology and the cheapening of energy, I think we are now facing an unprecedented situation.

I just explained the current reality and my prediction for the future.
I still want to express my point of view. I think we should promote Hornbill vigorously because we would do it even if we don’t do American.

If they are the first to achieve a technological breakthrough and move manufacturing back to their home country on a large scale through unmanned factories, even if it is just to Mexico or the Maple Leaf Country, it will be a huge blow to us.

Not to mention that with the support of Alpha, Malaysia's manufacturing productivity and profit margins are catching up with Chinese companies.

The competition we face is not just from American.

At this critical juncture, if we don't move forward, we will fall behind. As for the wave of unemployment that will be caused, I think it can only be solved by giving money to the grassroots people.

Only by distributing personal income tax to stimulate consumption can we mitigate the social impact of unemployment as much as possible."

After Lin Jia finished speaking, the entire meeting room fell into silence.

After listening to this, the boss seemed to be thinking about something. Lin Jia’s plan was even more radical than Chen Yuanguang’s.

What Chen Yuanguang proposed was to reduce taxes, reduce taxes for employees of companies with poor performance, and strictly require companies with good performance to abide by regulations and not allow overtime.

Lin Jia proposed to give out money directly.

No one at the scene knew what to say. Lin Jia had already diverted the issue, from whether or not to give the green light to the next generation of Hornbill to how to deal with the unemployment crisis caused by artificial intelligence.

Because after Lin Jia and Pony finished speaking, no one could refute them.

Can Taobao, Pinduoduo and other companies say that, in order for us to survive, China should not try to reverse engineer Hornbill technology and just fall behind?

They know what to say and what not to say.

“I think even if we want to reverse engineer the next generation of Hornbill technology, all companies should participate together.

This is not just Tencent's business. Alibaba's technology in the field of artificial intelligence is ahead of Tencent. We hope to contribute our own strength to the country."

It is a bit funny for the Chinese in Maple Leaf Countries to say this. President Tsai’s determined look makes Pony wonder who is the old Chinese.

The people at Alibaba reacted quickly enough. After realizing that the situation was irreversible, they quickly lowered their expectations and changed their goals.

Didn't Tencent say that it was going to crack Hornbill? Didn't it say that it was going to develop general artificial intelligence to deal with the challenge from America? Then why don't you let us participate?
"That's right. Tencent alone is definitely not as efficient as us. We can join in and share what we have, compete and cooperate, and work together to reverse engineer Hornbill."

Executives from major Internet giants responded one after another, leaving Pony speechless for a moment.

He remained silent.

This meeting ultimately produced no results. It was just to listen to their opinions and provide some reference for subsequent decision-making.

After the meeting, everyone went back to wait for the results.

Like Chen Yuanguang, Lin Jia was invited by the boss to have dinner with him.

This is the privilege brought by Chen Yuanguang's status. While other entrepreneurs eat in the cafeteria, Lin Jia can talk to his leader alone.

"Lin Jia, is Yuan Guang okay?"

"The composite rocket exploded during launch a couple of days ago, and he was feeling depressed. Apart from that, everything else was fine."

“This is normal, after all, this is a road no one else has walked on, so explosions are inevitable.

Similarly, regarding the direct cash distribution you mentioned today, we have been hesitant to make this decision because we have never done it before.

There are many issues such as scale, scope, duration, financial pressure, etc., and colleagues in the finance department have not thought them through clearly.

Our internal think tank has discussed this many times, but we have never been able to reach a consensus on what to do. ”

(End of this chapter)