Chapter 313: The "Emergence" Effect of Robots

Everyone from netizens to professionals were stunned.

Technology giants like Baidu, Alibaba, and Huawei have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in driverless cars. New energy vehicle companies like NIO, Xiaobian and Li Auto have also invested heavily in the driverless car market.

The former hopes to become a service provider, while the latter hopes to empower their own new energy vehicles.

Now suddenly a set of palm techniques falls from the sky to tell you that the technical route you guys are taking, whether it is lidar or camera, they are all wrong. Robots are the king.

It's like everyone is practicing martial arts, I'm practicing the Nine Yang Manual, you're practicing the Exorcism Sword, and suddenly someone shows up, he's practicing magic, and he knocks everyone down with one move.

This is absolutely unacceptable to everyone.

From Shenhai to Yanjing, from California to Washington, all companies related to driverless cars are holding meetings.

What should we do? Should we continue with the previous plans? Should we continue with the previous investments?

Invest in it. We don’t know when L4 will be ready. Others’ L4 is already running in the city, on such a complicated road section as Shenhai.

Even if we don't invest, we will still follow Chen Yuanguang's technical route of developing robots. The problem is that no one knows how the other party did it.

To put it bluntly, a robot is nothing more than two cameras at the eyes. Isn’t it essentially a machine vision solution?

But they are all machine vision. Why does the unmanned driving led by Chen Yuanguang need to add robots for no reason?
Countless R&D personnel have watched Chen Yuanguang's latest interview with the Central Bank over and over again. From what Chen Yuanguang said about this disruptive artificial intelligence technology, they absolutely do not believe that the robots were added just for show.

When the Jetta started running in the morning, the employees really didn't believe it and even suspected whether it was an April Fool's joke. In other words, it looked like a robot was driving it, but in fact, like some unmanned vehicles like Carrot Run, there was someone operating it behind the scenes.

Later, as more and more videos were observed, this possibility was ruled out because the Jetta had not been modified.

Someone else asked, didn't the God of Light go to Sweden to have a robot stand-in? Could this be a robot stand-in, with a human behind the scenes?

This rumor was denied by Didi shortly afterwards.

"We have confirmed that the white Jetta with license plate number 沪A**** currently operating in Shenhai City is being driven by a robot without any human intervention in the background.

The white Jetta has been tested on actual roads across the country for more than 5 kilometers, and has never had a traffic accident. Didi's internal technical team has observed that the robot can perform routine operations such as refueling in addition to picking up and dropping off passengers.

Didi has officially spoken out about it, and people are gradually realizing that it is indeed robots that are driving.

"I'm working on self-driving cars at a large company, and our entire team is stunned. When we saw the news yesterday, we thought Musk was joking.

When I saw the TikTok video this morning, I still had illusions and thought it was a special effect.

When the white Jetta was running all over the streets, I asked all the people working on the driverless car and they were all shocked. Can you imagine that? Now even ordinary people are increasingly relying on assisted driving functions to drive cars. A robot was driving a broken Jetta around Shenhai.

There is no assisted driving, no lidar, and I don't know whether there are satellites, but it has overturned the cognition of all of us practitioners. We also know the group from the University of Tokyo mentioned by Musk. The professor's name is Kento Kawaharazuka, right?

You may think that Todai is pursuing this technical route, so this is possible. Guangshen is just developing and expanding the existing technical route of the Todai team.

I want to tell you that the main business of this Dongda team is not driverless cars at all. Their robots are more like toys. In our industry, they are a million miles away from being practical.

Let me briefly introduce Kento Kawaharazuka's project. In addition to driving robots, they also make cooking robots. His goal is to make a general-purpose robot that can help you do many things like the robot nanny in science fiction movies. Therefore, driving is just one of these many skills.

And he is just an assistant professor and is now a visiting scholar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

The robot he made can only operate in a specific environment and can only run at a speed of 5km/h, while the robot made by the God of Light can almost run at the upper limit of speed in Shenhai City.

It was a bit of an exaggeration to say that his robot was treated as a joke, but no one has ever really taken this technology route seriously, and I absolutely do not believe that Guangshen did this project because he was inspired by him.

Finally, everyone is waiting for news. What exactly is the technical route and what should we do next? According to my latest news, Mr. Lei should have gone to find out, so everyone wait and see.

Our internal communication group said that the longer this white Jetta was driven in Shenhai City, the more angry everyone became. "

Before noon, a lot of people wanted to experience this Jetta, which is said to be the first robot driven on the road.

There are internet celebrities who are trying to take advantage of the popularity, and there are also practitioners in the industry.

In just half a day, scalpers on Xianyu started selling tickets for the white Jetta.

"Boss, there are scalpers selling tickets for the white Jetta on Xianyu."

"What? A white Jetta? The white Jetta driven by a robot created by the God of Light?" Can this be sold? The head of the NIO autonomous driving team thought it was a powerful scalper.

"Yes, that's the one."

"How to sell it?" He was extremely curious about how they could sell it.

"We make a reservation first, and reserve the place where we want to get on the car. Then they will select the place where we want to get on as the passing point during the taxi process. Then when Jieda arrives at the passing point, we just need to get on the car."

"But how can they guarantee that they will succeed?"

"So they make reservations first. They must have a lot of mobile phones inside, and then they seem to have internal information from the traffic management department, which allows them to obtain the Jetta's recent location. They will then place saturation orders around the location of the white Jetta at the same time.

Finally, there is always a successful order.

As for what to do if the order is successfully placed but the person has not arrived yet, as long as you are willing to pay, Didi has an overtime waiting fee and can wait for you for up to three hours.

That's more than enough time.

The scalper showed me their successful orders, and they had already successfully placed one order.”

The scalper's operation made him sigh with admiration. Snakes have their own paths and rats have their own paths. The scalper's sense of smell is very sensitive.

"how much is it?"

"5 RMB. He said that he needed to place an order when multiple mobile phones were saturated, and the success rate could not be guaranteed, so the fee would be very high."

"Give it to me. The company will reimburse me for this."

For individuals, this amount of money is very expensive, but for companies or internet celebrities, this amount of money is not unaffordable.

Didi drivers were desperate. Carrots and robots were trying to steal their business. They felt like they were at the bottom of the food chain. Lei Jun went to Chen Yuanguang to get information, while some corporate executives went directly to Lin Jia.

Since the Jetta incident started to ferment in the morning, Lin Jia's phone has never stopped ringing.

"Robin, don't worry. Guangjia Aerospace will not engage in unmanned driving business. The robot is only used for technical verification."

The first person to call was Robin from Baidu. He couldn't help but be anxious because Baidu's core business was about to be hollowed out by Tencent.

Baidu went all-in on driverless cars out of desperation, and has just signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangjia Aerospace. If the entire framework cooperation agreement is fully implemented, the total amount will exceed 20 billion RMB.

This contract has not even been signed for a year, and now you tell me that driverless robots are the future?

Robin couldn't sit still, and he spent real money. Aren't we strategic partners? How come I, a strategic partner, didn't know that your technology has reached L4?

Neither Robin nor Baidu can accept this. Baidu still has more than 100 billion in cash on its books, but the market value of Baidu's Hong Kong stocks is about to fall below 80 billion RMB.

"Robin, due to the confidentiality agreement, I don't know the specific technical details behind this.

I have no way to give you a conclusion as to whether the relevant technology will be open source and what the technical route will be.

This project does not belong to Guangjia Aerospace. It is a project led by Yuan Guang and participated by some young scholars from the Natural Science Foundation Committee. It has nothing to do with Guangjia Aerospace. I knew about it no earlier than you did.

I know you are anxious, but don't worry, I will share the information with you as soon as I know it."

Robin on the other end of the phone was about to curse, it would be strange if he wasn't anxious.

But he couldn't possibly get angry at Lin Jia, so he spoke as gently as possible on the phone. He thought that if he were in front of Lin Jia, he would probably shed tears and cry like Dong Zhuo to death.

"Mr. Lin, I don't mean to blame you. It's just that this concerns the livelihood of Baidu as a whole and thousands of Baidu employees. Please forgive me for being a little anxious," said Robin.

Robin was so anxious that he couldn't sit still just by looking at the tragic plunge of Baidu's Hong Kong stocks.

Not to mention the subsequent board meetings where he was questioned by shareholder representatives and mocked by netizens. These were nothing compared to the plummeting stock price.

"Robin, don't worry. Although I can't give you any results or make any promises, based on my understanding of Yuan Guang, he won't be the only one to eat.

Instead, we will share the benefits with everyone.

In the past, whether it was topological semimetals or perovskite batteries, we had licensed technology and shared profits with upstream and downstream companies.

Not to mention that driverless cars are not only related to technology giants such as Baidu, Huawei, and Ali, but also to car manufacturers such as BYD, Weilai, and Xiaomi. The state will certainly not allow us to dominate the market alone.”

"That's good, Mr. Lin, please inform me as soon as you have any news." Robin was very humble and felt extremely desperate in his heart.

To be honest, technology sharing is absolutely bad news for Baidu. It would be better for them to dominate the market alone.

Baidu's self-proclaimed advantage lies in its leading technology in driverless vehicles. If you share the technology, Baidu's leading advantage will disappear.

Are the driverless online ride-hailing companies that Luobo Kuaipao has teamed up with Huawei and Wuling Hongguang to compete on cost? On supply chain management? Isn't this just courting death?

If the technology is monopolized, Baidu still has value to exist. Once the technology is shared, Baidu will be truly finished.

He is now feeling extremely desperate, just like a patient diagnosed with cancer who is waiting for the results of the second follow-up examination.

The calls came one after another, and Lin Jia's stories were almost the same. The only thing she did the whole morning was answering the phone.

"Yuan Guang, this is roughly the situation," said Lin Jia.

Chen Yuanguang said: "You can tell them not to worry because this technology is not used for autonomous driving at all.

It is not cost-effective to develop driverless cars at such a high cost.

The reason we demonstrate driverless technology is simply to verify the rationality of the technology.

The cost of the entire robot is close to 50 million RMB, just the manufacturing cost, excluding technology research and development investment and patent fees.

Therefore, it is not cost-effective at all in the field of autonomous driving.

Its real purpose and actual technical details have little to do with autonomous driving.

We will also open-source the autonomous driving algorithm it has iterated from, but even if we do, it probably won't be of much help.

So there is no need to be so nervous. You just need to tell them the cost and explain that even if the subsequent process is optimized and large-scale production is carried out to reduce costs, it is impossible to reduce the cost to less than one million.

As for the autonomous driving algorithm, it is actually of little significance. The autonomous driving algorithm trained by it is only for this car, this robot, and it has changed a little, so it cannot be called L4." Chen Yuanguang said.

This made Lin Jia very curious, "How did they do this?"

Chen Yuanguang said: "You can understand it as we have trained a special robot driver, it only does this one thing, and its experience is extracted from the human brain.

How to put it, you can understand that we used a brain-computer device to extract the brain waves of online car-hailing drivers, and then fed these brain waves as raw data to the robot.

Then the robot began to try to drive based on this data, first on an experimental road, then in industrial parks, then in new districts in some cities, and finally on the road at large.

Without any human intervention, the initial model can drive, but it is limited to the most basic driving rules.

After being fed a large amount of brain wave data of online ride-hailing drivers while driving, it began to learn this skill. You can think of it as copying the skill.

But we don’t know the principles behind it or how it’s done. It’s a bit like the emergence of artificial intelligence.”

In the field of artificial intelligence, the emergence effect refers to a sharp increase in the performance of the original model, a steep jump in the data rising curve.

The "emergence" of deep learning has two meanings. One is that as the scale of neural networks, the speed of training machines, and the number of samples continue to increase, after reaching a certain scale, there is a sudden "quantitative change to qualitative change", and the neural network capabilities leap forward and "emerge", greatly improving the image recognition effect. The second is that deep learning performs extremely well in the field of image recognition, and this capability has also been rapidly extended to other computer fields, and even changed other disciplines, and the scope of application of the capability has also emerged.

Obviously, what Chen Yuanguang means is that when we use human brain data to train the robot's artificial intelligence, its skill level "emerges".

(End of this chapter)