Author: Shen Thirty Thousand Old Shen
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On January 17, the National Bureau of Statistics released the latest population data showing that in 2021, the mainland birth population of 10.62 million people, the death population of 10.14 million, the annual natural growth rate of the mainland population is approaching the era of zero growth. In 2021, the net increase in the number of people was 480,000, and the number of net increases in the number of people reached a new low in nearly 60 years (since 1962).
In this regard, the majority of young people questioned: "In the future, there will be fewer young people, that is, less competition, does it mean that the era of '996' and other work volumes will officially end?" ”
This problem also bothers entrepreneurs. "People will not always be young, but people will always be young", when this sentence is about to become a thing of the past, the possibility of rising labor costs makes entrepreneurs have to think about the direction of the future.
At this juncture, Cui Xiaopan, the winner of the "2021 Vanke Headquarters Best Newcomer Award", has undoubtedly stirred up the tip of the iceberg.
Cui Xiaopan is not a "person".
This is not surprising. Surprisingly, after ten months of working with Cui Xiaopan, most of them did not find out that Cui Xiaopan was not a "person".
Who is "Cui Xiaopan"?
At Vanke, Cui Xiaopan is an ordinary female employee.
On her work permit, she has a clear eyebrow and a dignified manner. Moreover, the ability to work is very strong.
A colleague of Vanke said that Cui Xiaopan officially joined the company in February 2021, and her work content has increased one after another, from the initial reminder of invoices and payment recovery matters to the upload and management of business licenses and the maintenance of social security provident fund information for employees.
Another colleague said that Cui Xiaopan replied to emails quickly, communicated very politely, and could promote the work in a timely manner; they also joked privately, saying that Cui Xiaopan was a "goddess" of colleagues, with good personality, strong ability, and beautiful beauty.
This impression lasted for ten months.
At the beginning of 2022, Yu Liang, chairman of the board of directors of Vanke Group, announced the winner of the 2021 Vanke Headquarters Best Newcomer Award: it was Cui Xiaopan.
What is heavy is that Yu Liang revealed at the same time: Cui Xiaopan, not "people"! Her real identity is Vanke's first digital employee, that is, "virtual person"!
The news immediately "exploded" and unveiled the tip of the iceberg.
Yu Liang announced more details of Cui Xiaopan's achievements: from February 2021, with the blessing of the system algorithm, Cui Xiaopan quickly learned the method of finding problems in processes and data, and played a role in various receivable/overdue reminders and work anomaly detection with a thousand times more efficiency than humans. With the help of the virtual task image rendered by the deep neural network technology, the write-off rate of prepaid overdue documents urged by Cui Xiaopan reached 91.44%!
For a time, Vanke employees were in an uproar.
Many employees said that after working together for ten months, they did not realize that Cui Xiaopan was a virtual person.
And this, now, looks more like a "test" of Vanke in terms of virtual human employees.
In fact, the enterprise that has tested the waters of virtual human employees is far more than Vanke.
Very similar to the work of "Cui Xiaopan", there is also the "intelligent demining system" virtual person jointly built by Huaxia Fund and Jingdong Technology. The virtual person was given a name: Bao Jingyuan (policeman). Through the selection, analysis and summary of massive information, Bao Jingyuan screened out risk points and then gave early warning.
It is reported that the accuracy rate of Bao Jingyuan's early warning has reached 85%! Not only did he liberate many human employees from the heavy lifting, but he also freed many from the risks of the "unknown" and "or have."
Not to be outdone in this regard, banks are not to be outdone.
At present, a number of banks have launched virtual human employees.
- For example, at the end of 2021, Baixin Bank launched its first virtual digital employee, AIYA Aiya.
- For example, in early December 2021, Jiangnan Rural Commercial Bank and JD.com Intelligent Customer Service Yanxi jointly launched VTM Digital Employees. The employee has the face of a simulated person, and can independently and accurately complete the whole process of self-service response, business handling, active service, risk control and compliance and other full-process services in bank transaction scenarios.
The banking industry has made no secret of its dependence on and longing for virtual human employees. An industry insider in the banking industry said that the benefits of using virtual people and employees are undoubtedly very many, on the one hand, digital virtual people can replace the original many real people can do things in a short period of time, further reduce the cost of enterprises; on the other hand, today's commercial banks need to invest a lot of human capital for market development, with virtual people employees, this investment can be quickly reduced.
"No need to rest, no salary, strong working ability", not only the banking industry, the media industry has quietly begun the "strongest inner volume".
In 2021, two hosts appeared on the "Every AI TV" under the Daily Economic News. One hosts a financial program, affectionately known as "Little Black" by the audience; the other hosts a fund program and is called "Little White" by the audience. "Every AI TV" quietly ran for 70 days, and the two hosts performed well and received praise.
No audience member discovered that the two hosts were not "people"!
On December 20, Xiaoice announced the news, and they cooperated with the Daily Economic News to launch a new digital twin virtual human technology that has been tested to the point of being indistinguishable from real people and has deceived the eyes of most viewers across the country.
Compared with other technologies, the Xiaoice framework not only improves the overall naturalness of virtual people to a degree that is difficult to distinguish from real people, but also realizes the unmanned operation of the whole process of video collection, editing and broadcasting for the first time, helping "per AI TV" to become the world's first 7x24-hour uninterrupted AI video live broadcast product.
Not only that, based on the overall artificial intelligence technology driven by the Xiaoice framework, the two sides have also realized the whole process of end-to-end AI automatic collection, editing and broadcasting. From the generation of AI text of financial information to the virtual anchor that drives pre-training, combined with the dynamic drawing of synchronous scenes, the final generation of complete live video streaming, the whole process no longer requires manual participation.
"7 * 24 hours of uninterrupted work, 24 hours a day, all year round, the more work the stronger the study, and there is no need to pay wages."
In the face of the emergence of this "king of workplace volumes", Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice and former executive vice president of Microsoft's Asia Internet Engineering Institute, said: "With the joint efforts of us and partners, an era of AI Being that never tires, is safe, reliable and stable output has arrived. ”
The Battle of the Virtual Humans
In recent years, "virtual people" are not a new topic.
In the fields of live broadcasting, idols, and anchors, virtual people have long been infiltrated in an all-round way.
- On October 31, 2021, virtual beauty artist "Liu Yexi" released the first video and appeared on the Internet hot search. So far, "Liu Yexi" has only released six videos on Douyin, and has more than 8.3 million fans and more than 20 million likes.
- In the live broadcast room of "Kuaishou Xiaodian", the e-commerce virtual anchor "Guan Xiaofang" and the real anchor cooperated to complete the live broadcast with goods, Lianmai PK and other actions. Whether it is body movements, head movements, mouth shapes or micro-expressions, "Guan Xiaofang" is almost indistinguishable from real people.
- At the New Year's Eve party of Jiangsu Satellite TV, the virtual person based on Teresa Teng and the live singer sang classic songs such as "Story of a Small Town" to let the audience feel the wonder of traveling through time and space.
After these "virtual people" caused a sensation, they did not cause people's anxiety. They are more like entertainment products, responsible for enriching people's lives.
However, the appearance of "Cui Xiaopan", "Bao Jingyuan", "Host Xiaohei" and "Host Xiaobai" has made people restless. People suddenly found that virtual people are no longer just an entertainment product, but competitors who can replace you, replace me, and replace ordinary migrant workers.
The working power of a virtual person is obvious, they do not have to eat, do not need to rest, do not need five insurance and one gold, do not have overtime pay, low error rate, do not get sick, and unconditional loyalty to the enterprise.
Hao Jingfang, a famous science fiction writer and winner of the 74th Hugo Awards, said that in the future, it is an inevitable trend for virtual people to replace people. Li Songze, chief investment adviser of Chuancai Securities, also believes that in the future, the penetration of artificial intelligence into human society will be very rapid.
A netizen said: Cherish the days when you can still roll with colleagues, they are at least still people.
However, french economist Philippe Aguion argues that from the perspective of economic history, fears of technological unemployment due to technological innovations have never become a reality. It believes that automation and the development of artificial intelligence have created more jobs for the market than they have replaced.
The investigation of CCTV Finance seems to confirm this statement, and the research and development investment of a virtual person can reach hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan. With the popularity of the concept of "virtual person", software and hardware engineers in related fields have become hot jobs.
People have to think about another question: what kind of jobs will virtual people create for the market? Basic, or high-end? If a large number of jobs created are similar to software and hardware engineers, it is actually a hint at another reality: virtual people will replace the basic work of a large number of ordinary people, and create high-end jobs that a small number of people are currently engaged in, thus raising the threshold for the whole people to enter the workplace, will this increase employment difficulties and widen the gap between rich and poor?
In fact, in the long history of mankind, there has been a debate on this issue for a long time.
In 1589, when William Lee dedicated his invention of the loom to Queen Elizabeth I in the hope of obtaining a patent, the Queen refused: "Your invention will have a disastrous effect on my subjects, depriving them of their jobs, reducing them to beggars and destroying them." ”
Now that the cycle of history has once again placed a similar fate before humanity, what will happen to us this time?
What do you think?
The media once reported the story of a high school student Xiao Wu and his father.
Xiao Wu told her father that she had fallen in love earlier, and his father was worried; the next second, Xiao Wu said that the object of her love was a virtual person, and her father immediately became calm.
"Because it's not realistic." Her father said.
However, more and more people in the industry are wary of stories like these. Whether the virtual person will "feed back" the prejudice and malice to the human in the learning process is a question; whether the virtual person should bear legal responsibility after causing harm to the human being, which is another problem.
On the other hand, experts say that human feelings will have a critical point, that is, the time to interact with virtual people reaches or even exceeds the time of interaction with real people, and some people may immerse themselves in the virtual world and find the main emotional support from virtual people, which may cause a series of social problems.
Perhaps, rather than being replaced by virtual people, we should worry more about whether we will not be able to distinguish between virtual and reality when we believe in or even indulge in virtual people.
Friends, what do you think of virtual human employees?