Source: previously reported by CCTV Finance, Baidu WeChat official account and Securities Times
On March 9, Robin Lee, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said that there will be no such career as "programmer" in the future, because as long as you can speak, everyone will have the ability to be a programmer. "There will only be two programming languages left in the future, one called English and the other called Chinese."
"In the future, everyone will have the ability to be a programmer"
Baidu was the first Internet company in China to launch a big model, but when Baidu launched it, I looked around and found that suddenly there was a "100 model war".
"There really shouldn't be so many people doing the same thing." Robin Lee believes that this is a great waste of social resources. Everyone is doing the same thing through repeated labor. "I have been advising everyone not to roll up models, but to roll up applications. Only applications can truly create value directly."
As for the development speed of AI, Robin Lee said: "I think the development of AI is slower than I expected. AI has been proposed for 70 years, and maybe every 10 years or so, a group of people say that we are finally going to achieve universal AI. But the situation is more complicated than expected."
Who can use ERNIE Bot and ChatGPT more easily and comfortably? In this regard, Robin Lee said: "If we compare (Wenxin Grand Model) 4.0 and (GPT) 4.0, we have obviously exceeded them in Chinese. For example, writing a Tibetan poem and so on, many big models can write it now. But if we want to write a first word, a word of the word" Qinyuan Spring ", then ChatGPT 4.0 is completely confused. It does not know whether the first sentence should be four words or five words."
What changes will the future big model bring to human life or production? Robin Lee believes that the big model will be very fundamental to the change of human production and life. The Internet has changed a lot of our lives, but this wave of AI changes will be more thorough and profound.
Robin Lee also said that there will basically be no such career as programmer in the future. As long as everyone can speak, or even write, you will have the ability that programmers have today, so this is still of great significance. There will only be two programming languages left in the future: English and Chinese, which are currently the two most advanced artificial intelligence languages in the world.
As a public company, one often hears evaluations from others. Robin Lee said that he would go to see those comments. "If we understand it from a positive perspective, we call it feedback. In fact, big models also require human feedback. When people use it, whether they like it or not, once you give feedback, there is an opportunity for improvement. I have seen various online reviews of Baidu and our products, all of which treat it as a form of feedback."
"Sometimes I can't sleep at night"
In recent years, both the big and small environments have undergone many changes. Especially in industries such as artificial intelligence, which are constantly changing, it may not be enough to describe their speed. Actually, this kind of speed can cause some anxiety, do you feel anxious?
In response, Robin Lee said: "To tell the truth, sometimes when I can't sleep at night, I will think about some problems that I feel puzzled during the day, and sometimes I suddenly think of something in my dream."
For example, when big models are so popular, how much practical value can they generate? Over the past year, my main focus has been on this question. When ChatGPT went viral, someone asked me what I thought, and I said, "It's still a bit early for this trend. When we can create applications that hundreds of millions of users are using, its true value will be reflected.". So in the past year, if we talk about anxiety, the main issue is that the big model has already been put there, and what are the applications on it Robin Lee added.
When the host asked Robin Lee if he didn't want to build the car himself? Robin Lee replied, "The threshold is a little high. It's troublesome to have production qualification and so on. Many people are going to die now, but in fact, many are OEM. He first OEM until the output is high enough, and then slowly build his own factory."
Large models bring performance growth potential
As a leading player in the field of domestic AI big models, Baidu's financial report is seen as a window to observe the progress of AI applications and business prospects.
On February 28th, Baidu released its financial reports for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. According to the financial report, Baidu achieved a revenue of 134.598 billion yuan in 2023, with a net profit attributable to Baidu (non GAAP) of 28.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39%. Both the annual revenue and net profit exceeded market expectations.
The financial report also shows that Baidu achieved core revenue of 103.465 billion yuan in 2023, with a net profit attributable to Baidu's core (non GAAP) of 27.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38%. Meanwhile, starting from the fourth quarter of 2023, the repurchase amount of Baidu shares was 318 million US dollars, and the cumulative repurchase amount under the 2023 share repurchase plan reached 669 million US dollars.
In Baidu's financial report, the Wenxin Big Model is undoubtedly the protagonist standing at position C.
Since the release of Wenxin Big Model 1.0 in March 2019, after 4 years of research and development iterations, the Wenxin Big Model has been upgraded to version 4.0 in October 2023. According to Baidu, both the usage of ERNIE Bot and the API calls of Wenxin's big model have maintained a rapid growth. Public data shows that by the end of December 2023, the number of ERNIE Bot users has exceeded 100 million. At present, the number of calls to Wenxin's large model ranks first in China. Last November, Robin Lee also mentioned in his public speech that there are more than 200 major models in China, and "the call volume of Wenxin model is more than the call volume of these 200 major models combined".
In 2023, Baidu will accelerate the commercialization of the Wenxin model and leverage AI to open up performance growth opportunities in multiple businesses. The person in charge of Baidu stated that in the fourth quarter of 2023, Baidu has reached cooperation with Chinese companies such as Samsung, Honor, and Autohome.
For example, Samsung has integrated multiple capabilities of the Wenxin model on its latest Galaxy S24 flagship phone, including functions such as calling, translation, and intelligence. Among them, "Circle and Search" is the most popular feature in the market. Users can circle or draw lines on text, images, or videos with simple gesture operations to immediately obtain accurate search results. It is worth noting that Samsung recently announced that the Galaxy S24 series phones have been on the domestic market in South Korea for only 28 days, with sales exceeding 1 million units, making it the fastest Galaxy S series to reach 1 million units.
In terms of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, Wenxin Big Model has also integrated into the Honor MagicOS Hundred Model Ecological Plan, empowering Honor YOYO assistants to create more professional user services, bringing localized text creation, knowledge Q&A, life advice, and more.
Robin Lee said: "In 2023, we will make significant progress in iterating ERNIE Bot's big model and Wenxin's one word, restructuring products and services, and commercialization. At the same time, Baidu's core business will remain resilient and healthy. Looking ahead, we will continue to firmly invest in generative AI and basic models, laying the foundation for creating new growth engines."
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