Criticizing Zhang Yiming as the "Demon King", what does investor Chen Weixing want?

Text: Radar Finance Meng Shuai

Edited by Deep Sea

"AI will shape the demon king of the world, and the people who are on the body of the demon king do not know it", Chen Weixing, who is an early investor in ByteDance, recently launched a "bombardment" on Zhang Yiming and Douyin in the circle of friends.

In Chen Weixing's view, in order to realize its intentions, Douyin uses AI technologies such as algorithm recommendation to play games against all Internet users who interact with it, and finally guides the user's behavior to conform to its sense of intent and purpose. However, as of press time, Zhang Yiming, Douyin, and ByteDance have not publicly responded to Chen Weixing's remarks.

Radar Finance learned that Chen Weixing, who angrily criticized Zhang Yiming and Douyin in the circle of friends, is the chairman of Fancheng Holdings Co., Ltd. Chan started his business in his junior year, and his success in the gaming field gave Chan a taste of the sweetness of making money, and Kuaidi Taxi made him famous in the industry. However, after the merger with Didi, Kuaidi Taxi gradually disappeared into the vast ocean of the Internet.

It is worth noting that the screenshot of the online transmission shows that after the "bombardment" of Zhang Yiming, Chen Weixing said in a group chat on WeChat that he would re-emerge and create a new social media platform in a completely transparent way to dry Douyin. Chen Weixing named it the "5210 Plan" and called on domestic AI talents to join.

In fact, Douyin, which Chen Weixing loves deeply and is responsible, and ByteDance, to which he belongs, has indeed relied on artificial intelligence algorithms to fight its way out in the fiercely competitive Internet war. Whether it is the early information application Toutiao, or the short video king Douyin, which is now popular all over the world, algorithms have played a vital role in the growth of these star products.

However, while these applications are becoming more and more aware of user preferences, many netizens are also beginning to find themselves as if they are trapped in the "information cocoon" built for them by big data + algorithms. Although Zhang Yiming has now retired from the management line of ByteDance, with the improvement of netizens' awareness, how to alleviate the public's concerns about the potential manipulation of users by algorithms will be a topic that ByteDance needs to continue to explore in the future.

ByteDance's early investors "bombarded" Zhang Yiming

In 2023, Alibaba and Tencent, which have long been leaders in China's Internet, feel the threat from the two "back waves". One of these two juniors is Pinduoduo, whose market value has surpassed Alibaba's in the U.S. stock market, and the other is ByteDance, whose revenue surpassed Tencent's in the first half of last year.

However, ByteDance, which has the potential of "new king ascending the throne", ushered in the "bombardment" launched by its early investors at the beginning of 2024. On January 5, Chen Weixing posted multiple texts in the circle of friends to severely condemn Douyin, and used the word "demon king" to describe Zhang Yiming many times.

Chen Weixing pointed out in the circle of friends that Douyin AI is awesome in that it will play a game to all the people who interact with it in order to realize its own intentions, and then make everyone's ideology conform to the feeling of the bureau it designed, and finally guide people's behavior to conform to its intention and sense of purpose. In Chen Weixing's view, Douyin AI is not doing it for the good of users, but for Zhang Yiming's own sense of making money, controlling people, and enjoying the feeling of being an ideological emperor.

Chen Weixing even gave an example to show that he confirmed that Zhang Yiming knew that he could manipulate people's minds. Chen Weixing wrote in the circle of friends that a well-known AI professor at Zhejiang University once told his assistant that when he had dinner with school leaders and Zhang Yiming, the leaders asked Zhang Yiming if he could support Zhejiang University to do something. In this regard, Zhang Yiming replied that he could ask Douyin to push more videos of Zhejiang University that are better than other universities before students fill in the volunteers, so that students are more inclined to apply to Zhejiang University.

And after the "bombardment" of a large paragraph of text, Chen Weixing also recalled his story with ByteDance. According to Chen Weixing, no matter how much he scolded Zhang Yiming, he must admit that he invested $10 million in the early stages of Douyin.

Chen Weixing also admitted that Douyin has made him a lot of money, and he is very grateful for it, "I treat him as a friend, and I am grateful for it all my life, although I am very anxious, but I will do everything I can to love him and help him! This is against the ethics of heaven, and we must reflect on and improve!"

Looking through Chen Weixing's Weibo account, you can find that he has repeatedly mentioned his views on AI. In May 2019, Chen Weixing wrote on Weibo that the first technological revolution in modern mankind is the steam technology revolution, the second is the power technology revolution, the third is the information technology revolution, and the fourth is the digital contract technology revolution, not the AI technology revolution.

In September of the same year, Chen Weixing posted on Weibo, "Dude said: AI technology is a technology that helps people exert their creativity, not just a technology that replaces people and eliminates labor." The market for the former is much larger than the latter. ”

On January 2, Chen Weixing posted again, "Dude said: AI is far more powerful than anyone thinks, and human beings must not let AI participate in our competition, but can only let AI participate in building a better world and loving mankind."

Regarding Chen Weixing's remarks about "bombarding" Zhang Yiming's Douyin, netizens also have different opinions. Some voices believe that algorithmic recommendations do bring more convenience to people, but at the same time, they also limit people's access to different opinions and information. People should be aware of the limitations of algorithms, especially on important public issues. Social responsibility is an important factor that recommendation algorithms should consider, and it cannot only meet the preferences of individuals.

According to the certified information, Du Zijian, a social media marketing researcher and author of "Boundless Strength", posted on Weibo that he opposes Chen Weixing attacking Zhang Yiming in such an extreme context, even if they have past grievances with each other, they should not use such an extreme context. Some of Chen's remarks, if said in the year when Douyin could be listed, would have had a serious negative impact on the company's reputation as a whole. If he knows that the consequences of this sentence are serious and allows this extreme context to continue to ferment, this is no longer a simple technical criticism, but a malicious attack with ulterior motives.

Du Zijian also said that the technical ethics of AI can be discussed broadly and rationally within the scope of science and technology (because AI ethics itself has no judicial definition). If Douyin does have evidence of AI violations, Chen Weixing can file a relevant lawsuit, instead of making irresponsible "personality attacks" with such extreme remarks.

Some netizens believe that Chen Weixing's criticism of Zhang Yiming and Douyin this time may also be to attract attention and traffic from the outside world for his new project.

Chen Weixing once founded Kuaidi Taxi, and wants to go out of the mountains again to do Douyin?

Radar Finance learned through public information that Chen Weixing, who targeted Zhang Yiming and Douyin this time, graduated from the School of Civil Engineering of Zhejiang University, where he studied civil engineering and was also selected into the 2012 Forbes list of China's post-80s entrepreneurs.

Back in August 2006, Chen Weixing, who was still a junior in school, brought many of his classmates to found Hangzhou Fancheng Technology Co., Ltd., and started his own entrepreneurial journey. After the establishment of the company, the team's first project was a business paging platform, testing the water in Hangzhou, visiting and booking services, but the project ultimately ended in failure.

Later, Chen Weixing and his team moved into the field of games, focusing on the development and operation of web games and mobile Internet applications. In August 2007, Chen Weixing and his team developed the browser game "Magic Hall", which was well received in more than 20 countries around the world and gained more than 50 million users worldwide.

In 2012, the new product "Dream City", which took 3 years to develop, broke 100 servers in the first month of testing, and the monthly income exceeded 10 million, becoming the only new game in 2012 to win the "Top Ten Popular Browser Games". Subsequently, the company successively launched products such as "The Legend of Wukong Q" and "Sword and Magic", which were strongly expected by the industry. In January 2013, "Q Travel", which took 2 years to create by Fancheng and Tencent Technology, opened a closed beta. His success in the game industry has helped Chen Weixing complete a certain amount of capital accumulation.

In addition to the title of chairman of Fancheng Holdings Co., Ltd., Chen Weixing also has another identity, that is, the founder of Kuaidi Taxi. In 2012, Chen Weixing and his team created a fast taxi app. At its peak, Kuaidi Taxi's market share in the industry once exceeded 50%.

According to media reports, Chen Weixing was the first batch of students of Ma Yun at Lakeside University, and at that time, he became the first batch of students with Wang Lifen, the founder of Youmi.com, Qin Zhi, the CEO of Autohome, Wang Xiaofei of South Beauty Investment, and Mu Yan, the founder of Baihe.com.

According to The Paper, as early as April 2013, Kuaidi Taxi received $10 million in Series A financing from Alibaba and Matrix Partners. At the beginning of 2014, Kuaidi Dache completed a Series B financing of about US$120 million invested by four institutions, including Alibaba and New Horizon. In October of the same year, Kuaidi Dache received more than $200 million in Series C financing led by Tiger Fund and followed by Alibaba. In 2015, "financiers", including Alibaba, Alibaba's major shareholder SoftBank of Japan and Tiger Global Fund, once again sent $600 million in financing to Kuaidi Taxi.

In addition to providing financing support, Kuaidi has also reached a close cooperation with Jack Ma's Alipay. In July 2013, Kuaidi became a strategic partner with Qunar, AutoNavi Map, Baidu Map and Alipay to provide service support for its taxi function, and in August 2013, Kuaidi Taxi was connected to Alipay and became a taxi app that can pay all taxi fares online through Alipay. At the end of November 2013, Kuaidi Taxi also cooperated with Alipay to promote the offline taxi market.

In 2015, Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache announced a strategic merger. At that time, the new company announced that it would implement a co-CEO system, and the two companies would remain unchanged in terms of personnel structure, and the business would continue to develop in parallel, and they would retain their respective brands and business independence.

After years of development, Didi has now become the most well-known brand in the online car-hailing market by most users, while the presence of fast taxis is getting weaker and weaker. Radar Finance noticed that there was no longer even a fast taxi in Apple's app store, and even the official blog of fast taxi had disappeared into the vast Internet ocean.

According to the official website of Fancheng Holdings, in addition to fast taxis, Chen Weixing has also created star projects such as Fancheng Assets, Insurers, and Fast Freight. Founded in 2016 by Chen Weixing, Fancheng Capital mainly focuses on the incubation and investment of new technologies, with more than 10 billion yuan of fund assets under management, and has invested in unicorn projects such as ByteDance, Li Auto, Tiger Brokers, Leapmotor, and New Trend Media.

It is worth mentioning that, according to screenshots on the Internet, on January 6, Chen Weixing said in a group chat that he would officially return to the mountain, personally serve as the chief commander, and create a new social media platform Douyin in a completely transparent way, so as to share the benefits more fairly with all mankind.

Chen Weixing also said in the group chat that all the companies he is associated with will either agree with him and fight with him, or he will withdraw from the company and sell all his shares. At the same time, Chen Weixing also called on domestic AI technicians to join his team, and the deadline for the launch of his products is the end of August. Chen Weixing named this plan "5210 Project" (homonym "I love you"), that is, it will surpass Douyin in 5 years, end in 2 years, and restore the excellent culture of gentleness and humility of the Chinese nation in 10 years.

"Algorithm Master" Zhang Yiming and his "Algorithm Business Empire"

Radar Finance found that in the development process of ByteDance, algorithms based on artificial intelligence technology have left an indelible mark on its continuous growth.

In March 2012, ByteDance was incorporated. In August of the same year, ByteDance's star product Toutiao was launched, which is one of the earliest information flow aggregation media platforms in China with algorithms as the core. The reason why Toutiao can stand out from the encirclement is inseparable from its information distribution mechanism based on machine Xi and big data mining.

In 2015, Zhang Yiming mentioned in a speech that Toutiao's recommendation system will be easier for users to use the longer they use it, and the more the system perceives his behavior, the more it will understand. Also, the more people use it, the more it will understand, because there are common things between different people. When a person uses Toutiao in the subway, not only is he using Toutiao, he is observing the reading data, but in fact, the system behind Toutiao is also observing him.

In Zhang Yiming's view, Toutiao can understand what users like better than the user's assistant, which is also a reality that is likely to be achieved, or has been reached. Because the IQ of the machine may not be high, but it is not as old as it is well-informed and tireless. Zhang Yiming believes that after connecting many devices through machines, observing the behaviors generated on many devices, and forming machine intelligence, it can smooth the information gap on a large scale and reduce the burden on people.

In March 2016, ByteDance set up an artificial intelligence laboratory. In September of the same year, Douyin, the king of short videos, which now has hundreds of millions of monthly active users in China, was officially launched. Relying on the algorithm-driven content recommendation mechanism, Douyin frantically harvests users' usage time. After years of development, Douyin and the overseas version of Douyin Tik Tok have become popular apps at home and abroad.

According to the "2023 H1 China Mobile Internet Traffic Semi-annual Report" released by iResearch, in June last year, the number of users of Douyin exceeded 900 million, and the platform traffic and year-on-year growth rate were far ahead of other competing products. In terms of usage time, Douyin's average daily usage time is as long as 109.1 minutes, while the overall usage time of the short video industry has decreased by 1.7%, the usage time of Douyin's short videos has increased by 6.4% year-on-year.

Some industry insiders believe that ByteDance's star products, including Toutiao, Douyin, etc., are based on personalized recommendation engine technology, which can make personalized recommendations according to each user's interests, preferences and behavioral data, and the recommended content includes information, videos, music, etc.

In this mode, the user's browsing history, likes, comments, shares and other behaviors, as well as the user's watchlist and search history and other information may be "requisitioned" by the algorithm, which helps the app to mine the user's interests from the dimensions Xi of activity track, daily behavior, viewing habits, geographical location, occupation, age, etc., and continuously update the user model analyzed based on user behavior.

However, while algorithms have made apps more "understandable" to users, more and more skepticism has begun to emerge from the outside world. Many netizens believe that when the information field that people pay attention to is Xi guided by their own interests, people's lives will also be shackled in a "cocoon" like a silkworm cocoon.

In September last year, many media outlets also reported on the existence of a phenomenon on Douyin, where different accounts saw different comment sections under a video about a couple arguing. In the comment area seen by male user accounts, the top comments are all from male netizens, and their positions are also from men, while the comment area seen by female netizens is just the opposite.

Subsequently, a blogger noticed the relevant information and decided to do a test as well. First of all, she re-registered a Douyin account, and the first thing she did after registration was to search for Yixiao Allure and click to follow, and then open the same city and consciously like the video of the elderly in the same city in the information stream.

Under a series of user behaviors that she carefully set, her newly registered Douyin account was recognized by the system as a completely different user. The blogger bluntly said that after an hour of doing this, she found herself entering a new world, even unimaginable to her former self.

Although ByteDance is a new Internet giant driven by intelligent algorithms, more and more Internet manufacturers are also making efforts in algorithms. In March last year, Xinhua News Agency published a commentary entitled "Algorithms Can't Be Turned into Calculations." It is mentioned that for Internet platforms, algorithms are undoubtedly a sharp weapon, which can not only quickly and effectively screen out user needs, meet their browsing and reading needs, but also lock in the "gold owner" in a timely manner, and maximize the economic benefits of the platform by "watching people put dishes", which seems to be a "win-win".

However, "the favored have nothing to fear". There is a mandatory feature of pushing browsing and reading content to users through algorithms, ignoring whether users need it in the future. What's more serious is that some platforms use big data to "kill ripeness" to implement unreasonable differential treatment, use algorithms to induce users to become addicted to the Internet, over-consume, rely on traffic fraud, brush volume control and evaluation, etc., to influence online public opinion, and even push specific bad information to young people...... When algorithms become calculations, all kinds of chaos arise. When algorithms that are supposed to facilitate public access to the Internet become counted, it is imperative to strengthen regulation to prevent the misuse of technology.

And Su Hua, the founder behind another short video giant Kuaishou, also talked about his views on artificial intelligence algorithms. Su Hua said that he is a software engineer, and in his opinion, the algorithm is actually similar to a carpenter's hammer and axe, which is essentially a tool, so the so-called bias mainly depends on how the person who uses the tool uses it.

"The people who master this kind of tool today are usually software engineers or algorithm engineers, and the people who master it well understand the characteristics of each tool, how to use this feature, and finally see if there is any bias. When we talk about using correct values to guide algorithms, we are essentially talking about how people who use algorithms can better use the characteristics of algorithms to solve social problems," Su Hua further added.

Or realize that algorithms are a double-edged sword, and many Internet manufacturers have begun to make corresponding changes. According to the Economic Daily, according to incomplete statistics, as of March 15 last year, Douyin, Toutiao, WeChat, Taobao, Baidu, Dianping, Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other apps have launched algorithmic shutdown buttons, allowing users to turn off "personalized recommendations" with one click in the background.

Although Zhang Yiming's ByteDance has reaped a lot of dividends from the AI-based algorithm, how to deal with the controversy behind the huge wealth effect brought by the algorithm has also become a topic that ByteDance needs to face.