Author | Yu Huiru Edit | Luo Lijuan
The boom in large models continues to surge in China.
After Baidu, Ali, Tencent, Huawei and other technology giants, Xiaomi also expressed its attitude towards large models - "For large models, of course, we will go all out and resolutely embrace." Recently, Lei Jun said on his personal social platform.
In addition to showing his attitude, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi Group, also revealed in a blog post that Xiaomi's large-model products are also accelerating the "rush": "We are developing some interesting technologies and products, and we will show them to everyone when we polish them." ”
Source: Lei Jun Weibo
Lei Jun's "official announcement" attracted a wave of onlookers. The comments were polarized, with some netizens expressing "expectation" and "believing in Xiaomi", and some netizens ridiculing Lei Jun for "making up stories".
After learning that Xiaomi wants to join the "big model war", artificial intelligence expert Dr. Li Changliang said, "big model + AIoT = king fried". In his opinion, Xiaomi has a wealth of AIoT application scenarios, and the large model will definitely bring another industrial upgrade of the smart home ecology.
There are also insiders who believe that the person who is most likely to make a large model may have left Xiaomi.
In fact, at the investor meeting on February 9, Xiaomi revealed that the company has long tried in AI large models and other aspects, and it is a multi-technology route in parallel. Next, Xiaomi will increase investment in manpower and resources in this direction.
Before Lei Jun's "official announcement", Xiaomi Group has finalized its large model team leader. And through the form of internal email, Luan Jian was appointed as the leader of the large model team of the AI laboratory of the technical committee, and reported to Wang Bin, director of the AI laboratory of the technical committee, effective immediately.
All-weather technology learned from Xiaomi insiders that the Xiaomi AI Lab large model team can schedule group resources, including but not limited to business, research and development, manpower and investment. This is Xiaomi's special investment in the direction of large models.
In the future, Xiaomi will continue to research on large models and introduce more advanced large model capabilities, including exploring multi-modal capabilities and improving the interactive experience of intelligent cockpits.
1
Xiaomi AI gene
"How are mobile phone sales? Is the car building going well? Will GPT be laid out? ”
The above three topics are the three topics that investors are most concerned about at present. Among them, GPT has become a topic that cannot be bypassed, and even accounts for most of the attention.
However, compared with the mobile phone business, the field of artificial intelligence has the characteristics of accumulation and requires long-term technology polishing and R&D investment.
On March 24, Lu Weibing, partner and president of Xiaomi Group, introduced in the earnings conference call that Xiaomi's AI team has more than 1,200 people. At present, Xiaomi has established several AI laboratories and research centers around the world.
According to public information, Luan Jian, the head of Xiaomi's large model team appointed this time, is a senior language and speech expert and was the chief scientist of Microsoft Xiaoice voice.
After joining Xiaomi, Luan Jian has been responsible for voice generation, NLP and other teams, responsible for the research and development of personalized speech generation, music generation, human-computer dialogue, machine translation, text generation and other directions, and the landing in products such as Xiaoai.
Wang Bin, the current chief scientist of natural language processing (NLP) of Xiaomi, is Lei Jun's Wuhan University alumnus, before joining Xiaomi, he was engaged in the research and development of NLP and information retrieval in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with more than 25 years of research and development experience in the field of NLP.
In a blog post on April 14, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi has been working in the field of AI for many years, and has AI labs, Xiaoai classmates, automatic driving and other teams.
"Although there may be a gap with other technology giants in terms of volume, Xiaomi AI Lab has certain exploration and accumulation in computer vision, acoustics, speech, NLP, knowledge graph, machine learning and other fields." Li Changliang said.
"Xiaoai classmate is a typical application product of a large model." Lu Weibing said on the earnings call that Xiaomi has invested in Xiaoai for more than 6 years and has accumulated long-term reusable experience in interacting with users.
Source: Xiaomi official website
According to Xiaomi's official disclosure, as of December 2022, Xiaoai's monthly active number worldwide is 115 million, with a wealth of landing scenarios, which can support the integration of mobile phones, speakers, cars and other scenarios.
"Of course, there will be a lot of challenges from a big model to a landing, but the success of ChatGPT has given us the confidence to verify that this thing is correct." Lu Weibing said.
Xiaomi's exploration of the field of artificial intelligence dates back to 2012. That year, Cui Baoqiu, former vice president of Xiaomi and general manager of the group's learning and development department, was invited by Lei Jun to return to China to join Xiaomi, established the Xiaomi artificial intelligence and cloud platform team, and built Xiaomi's first true machine learning platform.
Cui Baoqiu promoted Xiaomi's cloud computing-big data-artificial intelligence technology route, and he has publicly stated on many occasions that "Xiaomi can not invest too much in AI".
In 2014, Xiaomi established the AI Research Institute, formerly known as the Xiaomi Discovery Lab.
Two years later, Xiaomi AI Lab was officially established, with research directions including computer vision, acoustics, speech, NLP, knowledge graph, machine learning and other fields. At that time, Lei Jun announced that AI will become Xiaomi's core strategy for the next decade.
2
Xiaomi large model conjecture
The emergence of AI large models is an epoch-making milestone, marking that mankind will enter a new era of intelligence.
Tech giants who don't want to miss out on this new era are entering the game. In this race for a new era, the giants have their own talents.
In contrast, Baidu has data accumulation, leading advantages in the search field and first-mover advantages, Tencent has a large number of C-end data and scenario advantages, 360 has rich corpus, SenseTime has the ability of AI devices, and Alibaba's computing power resources are ahead. So, what is the imagination room for Xiaomi's large model?
"Xiaomi's advantage lies in its rich application scenarios." Li Changliang believes that in the large-scale model competition led by ChatGPT, the imagination space of smartphone terminals and IoT products is also increasing, mainly reflected in interactivity.
For a long time, Xiaomi has successfully built the Xiaomi ecological chain through investment and incubation means, launched various ecological chain products such as TVs, bracelets, sweepers, etc., created a smart home brand, and realized the landing of smart home scenes.
The device controlled by Xiaoai classmates Source: Xiaomi official website
"Whether it's Xiaoai, TVs, or other smart homes, if they are combined with large models, their interactivity will be further enhanced." In other words, the smart home will upgrade from a 'tool' to an 'agent'. Li Changliang said that this is bound to bring another upgrade of the smart home industry.
A number of institutions also mentioned in the research report that the large model led by ChatGPT may bring new opportunities for the development of the smart home industry.
West China Securities pointed out that intelligent terminals, as carriers and human-computer interaction entrances, are expected to detonate the AIOS era. Smart speakers, smart assistants, etc., as mainstream natural language reception portals, are expected to transform into important traffic portals for the interconnection of people and everything in the future.
In Guosheng Securities, with the advancement of AI technology brought by ChatGPT, it is expected to help increase the penetration rate of smart home products. In the AIOS super era, large model manufacturers, mobile phone terminal manufacturers, and smart hardware manufacturers will each give full play to their own advantages and tap the value of intelligent assistants.
In Li Changliang's view, this is the purpose and significance of Xiaomi's entry into the big model.