Alibaba: AI has penetrated into many fields, and "human-machine collaboration" has become a new way of working

On the eve of Labor Day, Alibaba released the "AI+" Career Trend Report, introducing how all walks of life in mainland China are using AI (artificial intelligence). The report pointed out that AI can program, design, and understand pig breeding, and has shown great value after entering all walks of life. The era of "everyone has an AI assistant" is accelerating, AI capabilities have become a key competitiveness in the workplace, and "human-machine collaboration" has become a new way of working.

"Human-robot collaboration" has become the new way of working and there are eight trends

According to the person in charge of the compilation team of the report, since last year, a group of AI pioneers have emerged in all walks of life, who have taken active actions to activate knowledge and data with the help of "AI assistants", apply various AI tools to assist work, and produce results in batches of self-made models. With the new way of working "human-robot collaboration", they are making work more efficient and environmentally friendly.

Based on interviews with the above-mentioned "AI people in the workplace", the report details their experience of using AI in their work, and summarizes eight trends of "AI + career":

According to the report, AI capabilities are the key to the workplace in the AI era, and AI assistants are the easiest and most inclusive way for individuals and enterprises to call AI super intelligence. Li Ning, chair professor of Flextronics, chair professor of organization and leadership at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, said that AI capability has developed into an emerging essential skill independent of traditional skills and knowledge, and more and more employers recognize AI capability as a key indicator for evaluating talents, and pay close attention to it in recruitment and assessment.

The "AI assistant" has learned to raise pigs and immediately began to learn to raise chickens and lay eggs

In March this year, the company's pig farm ushered in a new member - "smart breeding expert". It is not a real person, but an "AI assistant" built by the company on DingTalk. Although the farm managers are all pig masters, there is still a gap between them and "AI assistants" in terms of the breadth of pig raising knowledge. In just two weeks after the launch, more than 100 field managers asked the "AI assistant" more than 5,000 questions.

Liu Wu, the director of the Nanchuan Pig Farm in Chongqing, is full of praise for this "new colleague": "If you have any questions now, just ask the AI assistant through voice." For example, if the pig has an abnormal condition, and the ordinary breeder is not experienced enough to determine whether the pig is sick, he can describe the situation to the AI assistant. The AI assistant will give accurate data and knowledge directly, which greatly reduces our workload. ”

This pig "AI assistant" was created by the company's team of engineers. Zhou Zichao, a digital engineer at Tieqi Lux, said that the company's breeders are basically between 40 and 60 years old, graduated from high school or technical secondary school, and can only operate basic smartphones, and input mainly by voice or handwriting. The company has always had various systems, but they don't know how to use them, they don't like to use them, and the usage rate is not high. After the AI large language model was launched, the engineering team realized that as long as various systems were connected, they could be interacted and called with natural language, which could minimize the threshold for use and make digitalization truly "live".

In the end, Zhou Zichao developed this "AI assistant" on DingTalk based on the "Tongyi Qianwen" large model base. When training the "AI assistant", he fed three types of data: one is the company's rules and regulations, the second is industry data and knowledge, and the third is internal experience and data. After completing the "special training", the "AI assistant" knows the company's history and the latest information, and becomes the most knowledgeable "pig expert" in the company, waiting for colleagues to dispatch work anytime and anywhere. Zhou Zichao said that in the future, he plans to equip the company's chicken and egg production business with "AI assistants".

AI capabilities create "super individuals" and new AI careers have become an employment outlet

Nanqiang is a designer in Chengdu, who does not know how to program, she paid for cloud computing services out of her own pocket, practiced more than 50 picture models, and became the "top stream" on the AI design platform "Heyou". The more than 50 models cover animation, illustration, 3D icons, product booths, portrait photography, etc., and South Wall uses these models to serve customers and open them up to other designers. Based on the model, you can generate pictures of the same style with one click.

Nanqiang introduced that with the assistance of the model, she was able to quickly generate the first draft in batches, helping the customer to efficiently lock the design direction and solve the pain points of poor communication and multiple rework in the past. On the basis of AI-generated drawings, she combined with traditional design tools such as PS and vector drawing to fine-tune and deepen, and the final work is often satisfactory and can be successfully accepted and delivered. She roughly estimated that the overall efficiency of her work has increased by 10 times due to the stuck points in the process.

The report calls the new generation of professionals like Nanqiang a "super individual" in the AI era. The report points out that at present, the basic picture of the AI-triggered occupational revolution has become clear: a number of new occupations have been born because of AI, and a large number of traditional occupations have changed because of AI. The education sector and industry have also responded by cooperating in AI literacy and new AI vocational training.

In the second half of 2023, Hangzhou First Technician College, under the guidance of the Hangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, will form a relationship with Lingyang, a data intelligence service company, and start the pilot work of "one test and two certificates" for artificial intelligence trainers. This is a system innovation, Lingyang led the design of the training and certification system, candidates to participate in the training, through the certification examination, can obtain the enterprise certification certificate, and at the same time obtain the corresponding vocational skill level certificate, "one exam, double recognition". Certified trainees will enjoy policy benefits such as skill subsidies and bonus points for settling down, and can also get priority opportunities to work in relevant enterprises. In December 2023, the first batch of 21 junior workers and 40 intermediate workers of artificial intelligence trainers passed the certification at Hangzhou First Technician College.

Lin Li, general manager of Lingyang Digital Talent Development Center, believes that the AI era needs compound talents who "understand business, data, and AI", and it is very important to connect government, enterprise, and academic resources. At present, Lingyang's talent training program has covered more than 1 million enterprises across the country, and more than 100,000 people have passed the certification of "artificial intelligence trainer" position.

At the same time, computing resources began to accelerate the popularization of college students across the country. In November last year, Alibaba Cloud launched the "Cloud Work and Open Things" program for colleges and universities across the country, sending a cloud server to each of China's more than 40 million college students. Students can use it to build websites, build applications, and explore AI technologies. Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Science and Technology of China, South China University of Technology and other universities were the first to join. On April 1 this year, Alibaba Cloud plans to tour 70 colleges and universities in 15 cities to help students use cloud computing and AI tools to develop and innovate applications on the cloud.

Reporter: Cheng Chen

Editor: Yuan Biao

Review: Qi Ji Gu Jun

Proofreading: Rui Tianshu