From parents teaching by themselves, to reading through teaching materials to "grasp the key points" for children, to purchasing various educational equipment such as school Xi machines, tablets, and dictionary pens. Children are firmly at the heart of Chinese families' attention.
The question is, what is the use of learning Xi machines? If this question cannot be effectively answered, these products with many functions will inevitably become "IQ taxes".
Returning to education, we ask about the essence of education, which is simple but timeless: to teach each child according to his/her aptitude, and to provide each child with the most suitable educational strategies and methods to meet his/her individual needs.
For today's Chinese children, on the one hand, the whole society's concept of education is changing, from the major policies, to the "post-80s" and "post-90s" Kochi parents, all of whom are honored with personalized Xi learning ability training; on the other hand, the Xi habits of online learning Xi have gradually been cultivated, the traditional education model and the trend of education informatization continue to integrate and optimize, and the favorable factors of continuous innovation and iteration of technology are superimposed, and the hardware of intelligent learning Xi is ushering in a stage where it can show its talents.
Learning Xi is perhaps the best illustration of this proposition. Standing out from the dazzling intelligent education terminals such as student tablets, children's smart watches, and error printers, the learning Xi machine with both functions gives the best path for the integration of technology and education: it is not to subvert the essence of education, but to point to the original intention of education.
The "problem" that cannot be escaped
Is it a good kid who can answer questions, or is it a good kid who can ask questions?
This question is not only "hard to cry" for Chinese children and Chinese parents, but also Xueersi, one of the most well-known education companies in China established for 20 years, eager to seek a breakthrough and find an answer under the talent strategy of the new era.
In the middle of 2021, Xueersi quietly set up a Xi machine project internally, but the progress was far from expectations. At that time, it was the most difficult moment for the company's transformation, affected by policies, the main business was frustrated, and the number of employees plummeted. But education is still the way for this content-based company, "We are thinking about what the way to learn Xi in this AI era." Peng Zhuangzhuang, president and CFO of the company, said.
To do learning Xi machine or other educational hardware, Xueersi seems to be very "cautious". In June 2022, the intelligent Xi lamp was tentatively launched, and the pat lecture machine was launched in September, and there was little action to the outside world after that. The Xi project, which was given high hopes, was paused three times in two years, and the product was delayed. It wasn't until 2023 that Xueersi began to slowly step into the stage, and in February, a generation of Xi machines came belatedly. In August, MathGPT, a 100-billion-level large model in the field of mathematics, was launched. In December, the second-generation Xi machine was launched.
At the same time, the education industry is unusually lively. The veteran giant New Oriental quickly turned around and entered the live broadcast to bring goods, setting off a huge wave in the industry; Yu Minhong's old comrade-in-arms Chen Xiangdong took the helm of Gaotu, who also chose the same route, and the results have already improved; Ape Counseling has radically tested the waters in the fields of coffee, maternal and child care, and clothing. Educational intelligent hardware is also in a scuffle: Youdao iterates two versions of the Xi machine in three months, Homework Gang launches two generations of smart flashcards in two months, and there are various intelligent hardware such as smart printers, smart Xi lights, and smart Xi desks...... Everyone wants to try the "hot model" and seize the first-mover advantage.
The industry is changing, the educational goals are changing, and Xueersi needs a breakthrough point.
At that time, the person in charge of the hardware of Xueersi Intelligent Xi did a lot of research. After the investigation, it was found that the "ash eating rate" of the Xi machine in the market was as high as more than 50%. The proposition that Xueersi has to face is: why does the educational hardware such as the learning Xi exist and what problem does it solve?
In April 2022, after more than half a year of research and development, the prototype of the Xue Xi ersi machine was placed in front of the Xueersi hardware team, and the plummeting utilization rate after the internal test poured cold water on the team, and the original new product launch plan could only be shelved. Immediately afterwards, Zhao Puzheng, who grew up from a front-line Xueersi teacher, became the new head of the intelligent Xi hardware team under great pressure.
Zhao Puzheng, who is deeply involved in teaching and research, knows very well that "high quality", "personalization" and "large-scale" have always been the "impossible triangle" in the field of education. In the past ten years, Xueersi has been looking for a solution to break through the "impossible triangle": in 2003, through unified teaching and research and open classrooms, offline classrooms have achieved high standards of rapid replication, and initially achieved high quality and scale offline. In 2008, Xueersi began to explore the online model, and after nearly ten years of exploration, the dual-teacher online large class with the help of real-time interaction and other technological tools gradually matured, achieving high online quality and greater scale.
Good content is the foundation of learning and thinking, and it is within reach on a large scale on the basis of Internet capabilities. Only in the solution of personalized learning Xi, even if you learn and think in the past, you have not found a good solution, but this is the core of education.
AI brings new solutions
At the end of 2022, ChatGPT, which detonated the world, was launched, and the progress of AI technology gave Zhao Puzheng a lot of inspiration. Personalized teaching takes advantage of artificial intelligence technology. People suddenly realized that it was possible for ordinary people to use smart tools to improve their work ability and expand their knowledge. All walks of life are experiencing the baptism of AI fever, and "AI + education" has become one of the most imaginative stories in the market.
Zhao Puzheng began to explore a different possibility, combining "content + technology", breaking through the category of "learning Xi resources" in the Xi machines on the market, but through AI technology, to give users a complete and systematic learning Xi solution.
AI technology does address the essence of education – personalized learning and Xi.
Since 2020, Xueersi has been working on an exclusive AI team to tackle key problems with automatic problem-solving technology. The automatic problem solving technology is used to provide adaptive question recommendations upside down, and the accurate relevance is as high as 80-90%, which is much higher than the industry average standard. Based on MathGPT, a large model of Xueersi that passed the record in November 2023, it can automatically solve mathematical problems, correct complex application questions, correct Chinese and English compositions, and personalize AI step-by-step lectures...... From dreams to reality.
In addition to more advanced hardware configuration, self-developed content system precipitated by 20 years of teaching and research, AI questioning, AI correction and other intelligent tools, the biggest highlight of the newly released Xueersi second-generation learning Xi machine is the loading of the large model MathGPT, which locks the weak points through "Q&A interaction", which makes it possible to reproduce the one-to-one personalized learning Xi of offline teachers.
The development of AI technology has come naturally, bringing new solutions to the "impossible triangle". "Learning Xi machine is the most stable, the best form that can carry technology and a large number of high-quality content at the same time. After three years of exploration, the answer is on paper.
Bet on educational hardware
The late-blooming Xi learning machine has finally been launched. Prior to this, the rush of educational hardware has begun, which is regarded as a battlefield that must be won by educational technology companies.
On the one hand, the market size brought about by homeschooling Xi under the epidemic has risen repeatedly, allowing practitioners to see opportunities. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the market size of China's educational smart hardware was 32.9 billion yuan in 2021 and is expected to grow to 74.1 billion yuan in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.6% for China's smart Xi devices.
On the other hand, home learning Xi is the most important learning Xi scenario in addition to classroom learning Xi. A child's Xi time at school is 8 hours, and the Xi time at home is about 3 hours, while the previous education and training time was only 40 minutes. According to data from brokerage CICC and IDC, the number of academic Xi tablet shipments has increased significantly, with Xi of learning machines undertaking part of the demand for online education.
With the development of the economy, the increase in per capita household disposable income, the trend of declining birthrate and refined education, parents' investment in their children has only increased, and the demand for education is no longer limited to solving questions, but truly teaching students according to their aptitude and personalized training.
The times have made it clear that we need children who can ask questions and think independently. In 2010, based on the content of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the "Outline of the National Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020)" was issued, and "focusing on teaching students according to their aptitude" was one of the important directions of the innovative talent training model. In 2019, the State Council issued the "Modernization of China's Education 2035", which also clarified the important goal of "teaching students according to their aptitude", and proposed to use information technology to accelerate the transformation of the education era and realize the organic integration of large-scale education and personalized training. At the National Education Work Conference held in 2020, the policy level advocated that it is necessary to promote the in-depth integration of education informatization and aptitude-based education, which is an important part of realizing aptitude-based education.
AI, big data and other scientific and technological methods are regarded as the core of solving the Xi of hardware personalization Xi intelligence, but for specific implementation, each company is doing different explorations based on different genes.
Since the late 80s and early 90s of the last century, Xiaobawang Xi machine was born, and China's Xi machine has gone through more than 30 years. Nowadays, the price has reached four digits, and the intelligent Xi machine is still the "sweet and sweet" product in the sales lists of major platforms and shopping mall counters.
The Xi machines on the market are roughly divided into three categories, and the three major factions of science and technology, education and training and traditional are competing differently based on their own data advantages. The science and technology manufacturers are represented by iFLYTEK and Xiaodu, all of which are equipped with large models on the learning Xi machine, and the learning Xi machine has industry-leading capabilities in AI precision, essay correction, and oral evaluation; Education and training manufacturers are represented by Xueersi, Ape Tutoring, Homework Help, and Youdao, and its built-in resources have become the core reason for the hot sales of Xi learning machines; Traditional manufacturers are represented by BBK and Reading Lang, and win through channels and can directly reach a large number of users.
Which is better? For parents, of course, they don't have to choose, they want everything.
Dissecting the shell of technology, content has always been the basic plate of education. After combining the online sales data of eight Xi machine brands on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, CICC found that in addition to hardware configuration, AI performance, high-quality built-in resources and high cost performance are the focus of consumers' attention.
On the content side, Xueersi is unmatched. Based on its nearly 20 years of off-campus training experience, it has accumulated more than 14 million minutes of high-quality self-developed resources on the Xueersi Xi machine, of which more than 95% are recorded by Xueersi S-level teachers.
On the technical side, the breakthrough is obvious. MathGPT has completed the relevant filing and has passed the review, becoming the first batch of education models that have passed the filing, and it is now fully open. The Xi Learning Machine will be the core landing product of MathGPT, and a variety of functions have been launched with large models, among which "AI Dialogue" locates precision learning to the step level through multiple rounds of dialogue, and has achieved intergenerational improvement in both accuracy and personalization.
"Xueersi has 20 years of accumulation in mathematics data and business, the accumulation of a large amount of education data and the ability to continuously produce education data, so I chose to do this difficult but correct thing. Tian Mi, CTO of the company, said that Xueersi hopes to use his years of accumulation in mathematics and AI to do a good job in the mathematical foundation of the era of AI large models.
This is a collective bet by education companies, and it is also a reshaping of the industry.
Explore new frontiers
"The regular style is not broken, and talents are rare". This is true for the education industry, and it is also true for education.
The new industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence technology has arrived, which is advancing many unimaginable and huge progresses, and at the same time, it is also profoundly changing our talent training model. So far, more than 20 developed countries have formulated development strategies for emerging talents, and more than 100 special programs have been launched to cultivate and introduce talents. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out: "Education, science and technology, and talents are the basic and strategic support for building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. ”
Education is entering the 2.0 era with technological progress, and learning Xi is no longer a process of transfer and transmission of knowledge from the inside out, but a two-way interaction between new experience and original knowledge and experience to enrich, enrich and transform Xi their own knowledge and experience. Technology plays a pivotal role.
Perhaps this is where the greatest value of the market in education lies. From the perspective of the entire industry, Xueersi's new idea of learning Xi machine solving problems has broadened the business boundaries of educational technology enterprises in intelligent hardware and teaching content, proving that steady and steady educational technology enterprises can take the third way - content + technology.
Education is inherently individualized and needs to vary from person to person. However, it is very difficult to achieve a thousand facets with content alone, and modeled teaching cannot formulate a Xi plan for learning and fill in the gaps; and technology alone is very likely to become an empty shell and eventually "eat ashes."
Based on powerful and high-quality teaching content, combined with the emergence of large models, it is indeed expected to bring new changes to the rigid human-computer interaction in the past, such as "AI conversations". Xueersi's integration of large models into hardware products not only enhances the competitiveness of hardware products, but also builds a new high-quality content matching mechanism for it.
When more companies are lifted by educational hardware, the key to success is bound to lie in the combination of underlying technical strength and content capabilities.
Looking back at the big waves of the intelligent education hardware track, thinking and making choices seem to run through the entire development process of the industry. For traditional education companies, especially online education companies, one wrong step is a wrong step.
This time, Xueersi broke the "old book" education enterprise personality. In the education hardware industry, which is still full of fog, the iterative success of intelligent learning Xi machine not only provides an important reference for the commercial closed-loop opening up of AI technologies such as large models in the education industry, but also becomes the vanguard of the transformation of personalized education models.
When the oldest industry, education, meets the ever-changing emerging technology, the Xi enters a new round of "renaissance". Traditional education companies such as Xueersi are also undergoing evolution and rebirth, and are doing their best to reach the other side of personalized learning Xi and usher in a new era of "education".
There is a long, long way to go, but people are trying to find their way.