In the past six months, the popularity of artificial intelligence large models has been in the ascendant. As a leading listed artificial intelligence company in China, Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFLYTEK, is so busy that his feet are almost untouched, and the team that comes to iFLYTEK to visit and communicate is endless.
iFLYTEK exhibition hall Photo by reporter Wang Ke
In his busy schedule, Liu Qingfeng accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from China Securities News, and he hardly needed reaction time to the questions we raised, and spoke quickly, talking about the company's development process and the future of artificial intelligence. At the same time, Liu Qingfeng did not hide his doubts from the outside world, and sincerely and frankly explained and responded.
In the field of artificial intelligence innovation and entrepreneurship for more than 20 years, Liu Qingfeng has regarded it as a lifelong endeavor, and put forward new missions such as "solving human needs" and "building a better world". On the road of diligently seeking technological innovation at the source, Liu Qingfeng expressed the expectation of "long-termism" - innovators themselves must endure loneliness, and society must tolerate failure.
"To hear the sound of innovative blossoms, we must first experience the seeds in the dark, germinate, wind and rain, and finally be able to bud and bloom the flower of technology or industry, even if it experiences winter, it will re-germinate in the coming year to welcome a new spring." Liu Qingfeng said in the interview.
The "Standing Up to the Sky" large model is upgraded again
On August 12, the China Enterprise Development Research Center of Xinhua News Agency Research Institute released the "Artificial Intelligence Big Model Experience Report 2.0", and iFLYTEK Xinghuo Cognitive Large Model Comprehensive Index ranked first.
Unswerving investment, research, iteration and evolution of the core technology innovation at the source for many years is an important code behind the "first". From the debut of the iFLYTEK Spark model on May 6 this year to the major upgrade of version 2.0 on August 15, in just 100 days, iFLYTEK Spark has comprehensively upgraded its seven core capabilities of text generation, language understanding, knowledge question and answer, logical reasoning, mathematical ability, code ability, and multimodal capability. According to the "operation" plan, on October 24 this year, iFLYTEK Spark will benchmark ChatGPT and achieve the set goal of "Chinese surpassing and English equivalent".
"What we see today is the achievements and impact of general artificial intelligence, in fact, we put forward the goal of 'allowing machines to listen, speak, understand and think' many years ago, and have never changed their original intention and insisted on investment." At the Spark Big Model Conference on May 6, we gave a clear timetable for benchmarking ChatGPT, both to approach OpenAI and to have our own uniqueness in source technology innovation. Liu Qingfeng said.
"We just have a spirit of never admitting defeat and striving for the first," Liu said. And this kind of "never admit defeat" can be said to be engraved in the genes of iFLYTEK.
Almost no one believes that 24 years ago, six college students at the University of Science and Technology of China, the "hairy young men" in the eyes of the world and the "grass team" in the eyes of capital, proposed that "Microsoft and IBM should be 'killed' and Chinese voice technology should be the first in the world."
The pride and bumpy reality of starting a business at the age of 26 are vivid in Liu Qingfeng's heart. "At that time, we firmly believed that voice was the most natural way for humans to communicate, and Bill Gates also predicted that the next 10 years would be the era of voice, and at that time China's voice market was controlled by international giants. We proposed that we not only want to be Chinese first in phonetics, but also in multilingualism. ”
The goal is ambitious, and the reality is skinny. Liu Qingfeng said frankly that at that time, their "grass team" could only achieve 3 points, which was even inferior to the 4-point level of ordinary people. But without ambition, there is no struggle. In 2006, iFLYTEK, which participated in the International Speech Synthesis Competition for the first time, became the biggest dark horse of that year and won the first world first in the field of artificial intelligence.
This "firm" original intention has lasted for 24 years, iFLYTEK has practiced the technical ideal of "standing up to the sky", and has overcome difficulties, from speech synthesis to speech recognition to semantic understanding, from Chinese to English to multilingual, from speech to image to multimodal perception and multi-dimensional expression, winning one first after another and handing over beautiful report cards to the world.
"We love it and hold on to it with pride, imagination and love." In the current critical period of the development of general artificial intelligence large models, when computing power becomes a "stuck neck" problem, Liu Qingfeng believes that it must be built on an independent and controllable domestic computing power platform. In July this year, iFLYTEK announced that it will join forces with Huawei and other strong forces to build a new universal intelligent base based on China's independent innovation.
The future has come a new mission of artificial intelligence
There is a statue of "standing up to the sky" in the headquarters campus of iFLYTEK, which represents the technical belief of iFLYTEK - technology should not only "top the sky" to be the world's leader, but also "stand on the ground", and strive to solve the actual needs of people's production and life.
"The impact of general artificial intelligence on the future is huge, affecting every country and region, every industry and everyone." Liu Qingfeng said. But such a powerful influence makes many people's blood boil while also making many people follow the trend and blindly speculate.
Liu Qingfeng insists that the development of general artificial intelligence must be based on solving human needs, "not to pay attention to those fun, interesting, bells and whistles, adding oil and vinegar or dispensable applications." Artificial intelligence should empower education, medical care, people's livelihood, improve industrial efficiency, and make everyone become a stronger self, I think artificial intelligence will surely go down in history more deeply by solving the rigid needs of human beings. ”
"Multimodal capability is a rigid need for AI-enabled industries." Liu Qingfeng said that this is not only the long-term strategy of iFLYTEK's artificial intelligence technology, but also the only way to achieve general artificial intelligence. A major upgrade of the 2.0 version of the iFLYTEK Spark model is reflected in the multi-modal capability. Liu Qingfeng said that the current multimodal capability has been widely used in education, medical, industrial, automotive, robotics and other fields, it can obtain more and more data from the real world, and there is learning, training and improvement in the product terminal, including more flexible and autonomous industrial robots, better automatic driving, and companion robots that enter the home.
Liu Qingfeng once said that artificial intelligence is a lifelong career. Now that the era of general artificial intelligence is coming, 50-year-old Liu Qingfeng sees a new mission and direction.
In addition to solving human needs, Liu Qingfeng believes that the development of artificial intelligence must also pay attention to ethics and morality. "Our original slogan was called 'change the world with artificial intelligence', and now it has been changed to 'use artificial intelligence to build a better world', because artificial intelligence has indeed brought impact and challenges to various industries, the future does not belong to AI, but belongs to the new human beings who have mastered AI, how can we make artificial intelligence better follow ethical and humanistic values, let artificial intelligence become everyone's assistant, rather than bring greater challenges, this is the responsibility of leading enterprises and leading scientific research institutes, but also the responsibility of the whole society."
Long slope and thick snow Become a greater enterprise
From campus entrepreneurship, iFLYTEK has not only been successfully listed, but also the first listed company in the field of artificial intelligence in A-shares, but also seized opportunities and grown into an industry leader with a market value of 100 billion yuan. However, along the way, there were not only flowers and applause, but also the capital market's scrutiny, discussion and even questioning of iFLYTEK has never stopped.
For example, for iFLYTEK's 2023 half-year report, some people think that the company can still achieve positive cash flow in the second quarter during the huge investment period of the large model, which has exceeded expectations, and some people think that how can the artificial intelligence business be done for so many years, and the profit in the first half of the year will decline?
For all aspects of sound, Liu Qingfeng has a sober and powerful "heart". "We hope that iFLYTEK can grow from an excellent company to an excellent and great company. In this process, the various constraints and management requirements of the capital market, including various external voice discussions, supervision and even questioning, are also worth learning and learning from. I think this brings the company a more robust, sunny and transparent development, which is very meaningful for our long-term healthy growth. ”
To go from excellent, to excellent, to great, Liu Qingfeng does not deny that this process must require huge investment, especially "in the critical period of major science and technology industry change, it must be driven by the product market and the capital market." In the face of the sea of stars of general artificial intelligence, the fleeting development opportunities, to "concentrate on doing big things, concentrating on fighting big battles", Liu Qingfeng knows that the firm investment in R&D and innovation cannot be slack.
"From R&D to landing there will be a process, today I can also compress the R&D investment intensity from 20% to 5%-10%, short-term such as three years will not have any impact on me, but we will not do that, our goal is not to say more than 10 billion yuan of revenue, more than 100 billion yuan of market value on the line, it should be more than 10 times larger in the future, the return to shareholders is not to say more than ten or twenty billion, I hope to bring you greater returns."
In Liu Qingfeng's view, encouraging innovation must have "long-termism", and its other angle is to tolerate failure, and this framework is for people and themselves, "Entrepreneurs and technicians should not only do this, but also the market and investors should have this mentality." ”
The day before the launch conference of the 2.0 version of the iFLYTEK Spark model, iFLYTEK announced Liu Qingfeng's reduction announcement, and he was once again pushed to the cusp of public opinion.
Liu Qingfeng responded frankly that the so-called "cash out" of reducing holdings was only to repay the fixed increase loans that had matured, and did not sell 1 cent more shares for personal consumption, and these loans were originally invested in the production and operation activities of iFLYTEK. In January 2021, iFLYTEK launched the fixed increase plan, and Liu Qingfeng, as the actual controller, fully subscribed for this 2.35 billion yuan fixed increase, which was raised by Liu Qingfeng through pledge financing and other loans, in order to stabilize the company's equity structure and operation and management, and two years later, the original loan has expired.
Liu Qingfeng said that he is firmly optimistic about the artificial intelligence industry and the company's development prospects, the company was listed in 2008, and in the past 15 years, it has increased its holdings of the listed company four times, with a cumulative cost of 2.665 billion yuan.
"Looking at the dimension of 10 or 20 years, you will find that artificial intelligence is the biggest revolution in human history, and this revolution affects not only everyone, but also a major opportunity for the entire industry and capital market." But this is a process, who can see accurately, who can persist, this must use the spirit of long-term ism to do the source of technological innovation steadily. Liu Qingfeng said.
(Reporter Ouyang Chunxiang, Yang Jie, Li Jeong)
