General Secretary Xi Jinping mentioned in the "Speech at the National Conference on Ideological and Political Work in Colleges and Universities" that the golden period of today's college students' lives is completely consistent with the realization of the "two hundred years" goal, and contemporary students should be brave to be the pioneers and pioneers who walk in the forefront of the times, and write the youth songs and wonderful lives worthy of the times. Guiding college students to establish correct professional values and helping college students to clearly understand the responsibilities and historical missions that should be undertaken by the development of the current era can not only improve the ability of innovation and entrepreneurship, promote high-quality employment of college students, but also promote students to combine personal career planning and ideal pursuit with the needs of national and social development, and contribute to promoting social and economic development.
In order to further guide students' career development and enhance students' awareness of strategic industries, on April 11, 2022, the Tsinghua University Student Employment Service Association launched a series of activities such as "Voice of the Industry [Online Sharing Meeting of Outstanding Alumni in Key Industries]". Fang Ming, Vice President of iFLYTEK, General Manager of the Industry Acceleration Center, and Doctor of the First Yangtze River Delta Innovation Leading Engineering of Tsinghua University, was invited to share the online theme of "iFLYTEK's Artificial Intelligence Road" for Tsinghua University students, telling the development history of iFLYTEK, the current situation and prospects of the development of the artificial intelligence industry, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced, and giving personal views and suggestions on hot topics of career development such as college students' employment and entrepreneurship, and choosing employment industry. Nearly 300 students from various departments of Tsinghua University participated in the activities online.
First of all, Fang Ming alumni shared the development history of iFLYTEK. As the first listed company in China to start a business among college students, iFLYTEK has been established for 23 years, always taking the source of core technology innovation as the foundation of enterprise development, adhering to the development strategy of "standing on top of the sky", continuously improving user experience, promoting continuous optimization of products, and promoting the continuous maturity and progress of R&D innovative technologies. For example, in 2017, iFLYTEK was selected as one of the four new generation artificial intelligence open innovation platforms in China, and from 2018 to 2021, it won a total of 43 international artificial intelligence competition championships, and in 2022, it became the official automatic speech conversion and translation exclusive supplier for the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games.
In view of the current situation of the development of the artificial intelligence industry, Fang Ming shared the technological breakthroughs of iFLYTEK in the field of intelligent voice and artificial intelligence, and explained in detail the application and achievements in smart education, smart medical care, smart city, etc., and also shared the landing of iFLYTEK's teaching programs and smart campus projects in the education industry through vivid cases and data. The COVID-19 image-assisted diagnosis platform covers more than 1,000 medical institutions, and the intelligent voice outgoing call system helps prevent and control the epidemic. At present, artificial intelligence virtual anchors have been used in many mainstream media such as CCTV, People's Daily, and China Daily. From intelligent speech technology research to artificial intelligence technology, iFLYTEK has penetrated into many social and people's livelihood fields, using artificial intelligence to solve social needs and promote AI to empower all walks of life.
In the era of the Internet of Everything, voice is a must for core technology, and it is also a key technology to prevent "stuck neck". In summarizing the development experience of iFLYTEK, Fang Ming summarized as 1+6, 1 is that iFLYTEK has mastered the core source technology of independent control after years of practice, 6 keywords: platform + track (business model), just need + generation difference (product strategy), innovation + adherence (core values), in terms of industrial ecological construction, relying on iFLYTEK national new generation of artificial intelligence open innovation platform, to create a new industrial pattern led by technology, ecological integration and coordinated development, providing services such as entrepreneurial incubation, strong foundation engineering, and industrial empowerment.
After the theme sharing, in the free question session, many students combined their own job search problems and the focus of concern to ask questions, such as whether graduation should choose entrepreneurship or employment, whether Internet education under the double reduction policy has been restricted and affected, what achievements have been achieved by iFLYTEK in rural revitalization, and the development layout of cloud computing, intelligent transportation, and intelligent medical module iFLYTEK, etc. Fang Mingdu is enthusiastic to answer for everyone. For employed students, it is summarized in 8 words: look at the trend, follow the boss. Focus on the choice of work direction, whether to choose a direct connection and affect the fate of the country and the nation of the occupation or unit is very important, at present, the artificial intelligence industry is the hottest, most concerned industry in the whole society, the value of this industry not only includes digital industrialization, but also includes industrial digitalization, that is, three hundred and sixty lines of intelligent and digital transformation and upgrading, AI represents the trend and future of our social and industry development.
Students who choose to start a business suggest learning to borrow and choose to stand on the shoulders of giants, so that they can fly higher, fly farther, and fly faster. In terms of ecological cultivation and incubation, iFLYTEK has successfully cultivated 8 unicorns, 5 listed companies and incubated many gazelle enterprises in 15 cities across the country, and more than 10 cities are in negotiations, driving employment of more than 30,000 people.
When it comes to the career development plan of college students, Fang Ming gave 6-word suggestions for "understanding", "loyalty" and "enterprising", hoping that students can learn to think in empathy, be considerate of others, think more from each other's point of view, and be loyal to their own hearts, loyal to the choice of career and life development, and always maintain a positive and enterprising attitude to stimulate their potential.
Through this sharing, Tsinghua students will have a deeper understanding of iFLYTEK and the current development status of the artificial intelligence industry. The key to the development of artificial intelligence lies in talents, and since its inception, iFLYTEK has always put talent work at the center. In the "Announcement on Voluntary Information Disclosure of iFLYTEK's 2021 Annual Business Situation" just released, it was pointed out that in 2021, iFLYTEK's revenue was 18.3 billion yuan, an increase of 40.6% year-on-year. It is understood that among all the listed companies in A-shares, iFLYTEK is the only listed company with an annual revenue growth rate of more than 25% in the past 10 consecutive years. This is due to the fact that the company has been actively grasping strategic opportunities and increasing future-oriented investment and personnel reserves, in 2021, the company added 628 million yuan of related research and development expenses, and the total related research and development expenses reached 2.839 billion yuan, an increase of 28.43% over the same period of the previous year, and an increase of 3,301 personnel reserves.
In the future, iFLYTEK will continue to attach importance to talent development strategy, on the one hand, based on the "platform + track" strategy, combined with the "14th Five-Year Plan" to create a trillion ecological development strategy, to provide a platform and opportunities for innovative and entrepreneurial talents; on the other hand, iFLYTEK has officially launched the "Wild Goose Array Plan" to obtain high-end talents from all over the world, build a strategic fulcrum and a wild goose array pattern, focus on artificial intelligence frontier technical talents, as well as industry professionals with artificial intelligence backgrounds, and strive to build a healthy and vigorous artificial intelligence ecosystem. Finally, Fang Mingcheng invited outstanding Tsinghua students to join iFLYTEK and devote themselves to scientific and technological innovation, industry to serve the country, and use artificial intelligence to build a better world!