Zhongxin Finance, January 19 (Reporter Song Yusheng) Artificial intelligence has begun to enter the human workplace.

  Since last year, virtual anchors "trained" by imitating live anchors have begun to broadcast financial information 24 hours a day.

During the 70-day trial run of the virtual anchor, many viewers always thought the show was recorded by a real person.

But in fact, the content that the audience sees, including faces, expressions, body movements, words, etc., are all generated by artificial intelligence.

A virtual anchor that imitates the "training" of a real anchor.

Photo courtesy of Xiaoice Team

  At the end of last year, Yu Liang, chairman of the board of Vanke Group, posted a message on his WeChat Moments: "Congratulations to 'Cui Xiaopan' for winning the Best Newcomer Award at Vanke Headquarters in 2021, and the write-off rate of prepaid overdue documents that she urged reached 91.44. %." And this employee named "Cui Xiaopan" was the first digital employee of Vanke, and he urged overdue documents by email, and completed the work with an efficiency that was many times higher than that of humans.

Cui Xiaopan, a digital employee.

Photo courtesy of Xiaoice Team

  As the team that created these virtual humans, Xu Yuanchun, chief operating officer of XiaoIce Company and head of the artificial intelligence creativity laboratory, recently accepted an interview with reporters.

  In Xu Yuanchun's impression, artificial intelligence has developed to the point where it can enter the workplace and become "colleagues" with humans, and has experienced a "long" "evolution".

  "A few years ago, the virtual anchors may only move their mouths when they speak. At that time, everyone thought such technology looked weird." But now the artificial intelligence technology is enough to make the movements and voices of virtual anchors close to real people. s level.

  Why do humans need such artificial intelligence?

Xu Yuanchun said that his original intention was to "help mankind".

  "From a technical point of view, we hope that artificial intelligence can help human beings. But we are slowly realizing that it is the help to human beings that allows artificial intelligence to have some capabilities that were not easy for humans to achieve in the past."

  It is based on this consideration that Xu Yuanchun believes that mature artificial intelligence should have the ability to surpass humans in a certain field.

"In this way, it can help others, otherwise artificial intelligence is just a simple superposition. If artificial intelligence is the same as ordinary people, its significance will not be so great."

  During this period, concerns about the replacement of humans by artificial intelligence continued to cause public discussion.

  But in Xu Yuanchun's view, the development of technology is changing everyone's way of life, and human thinking is changing accordingly.

"Have you noticed that there has been less and less discussion of 'whether humans will be replaced by artificial intelligence' recently."

  In 2016, when the artificial intelligence Alpha Go defeated a human chess player, the so-called "artificial intelligence threat theory" became a hot topic of discussion.

Data map: Go man-machine battle in 2016.

  In 2022, 6 years later, more and more people will become accustomed to the existence of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence voice interaction engines like Xiaoai, Xiaodu, and Tmall Genie are being used more and more widely.

  When everyone can swipe "virtual human" videos on their mobile phones every day, and the metaverse has become a hot topic, the voice of fear of artificial intelligence has indeed been greatly reduced.

Humans seem to have accepted the emergence of artificial intelligence in our work and life.

  According to Xu Yuanchun, most of the feedback from human "colleagues" in companies that have applied XiaoIce's artificial intelligence technology has undergone a change, that is, "beginning to doubt and understand new technologies, to being pushed by leaders to do this. things, and then I want to use AI to do a certain business.”

  He felt, "This is the most exciting thing." Xu Yuanchun also envisages that the business of artificial intelligence "will continue to move forward."

  But how far artificial intelligence can go in human society is still only in the imagination.

(Finish)