Generative AI craze: a technological revolution that 'creates new jobs”

Since this year, the artificial intelligence (AI) craze has swept the world and is believed to usher in a new technological revolution.

The 2023 Tianjin World Intelligence Conference on May 18, with the theme of "Smart mobility, driving the future", focuses on new trends, new technologies, and new business formats in the development of artificial intelligence. After the opening ceremony of the conference, Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, became the first entrepreneur to speak.

At the scene, on the one hand, he shared his insights on AI very rigorously, on the other hand, he also mentioned the word "busy traffic" easily. Not long ago, Baidu Wen Xinyiyan’s “busy traffic” Wen Sheng picture became a hot meme on the Internet. At the same time, it was also suspected of being a shell of a foreign AI company. But soon, Wen Xinyiyan completed the iteration within one day, and "cars, water, horses, and dragons" became a lively "car, water, horse, and dragon", and the doubts were self-defeating.

Of course, the highlight shared by Robin Li at this conference is about the impact of AI on human society. He believes that although history does not repeat itself, it does have its laws. AI will not reduce job opportunities, but will create more new ones. Moreover, AI is a major wave comparable to previous industrial revolutions and will definitely create the next growth miracle of the global economy.

Indeed, as Mark Twain said, "History does not simply repeat itself, but it always moves forward with the same rhyme." Looking back at the wheel of history, every industrial revolution will eliminate some jobs, but at the same time create more new jobs, promoting the growth of the world's per capita GDP and the global economy.

For example, during the second industrial revolution, the emergence of automobiles was collectively boycotted by carriage drivers because they were worried that they would lose their jobs and be robbed of their jobs. But in fact, while cars made horse-drawn carriages disappear, they also created more labor demand for drivers, maintenance workers, production workers, etc., and created more jobs. Today, 30 million people are engaged in automobile-related jobs in China alone, forming a huge industrial chain and creating a strong "economic engine."

Through Robin Li’s speech at the conference, we can actually feel that a new technological change that affects human employment and global economic growth is already gaining momentum. This change is creating triple value:

The user value of individual employment, the commercial value of industrial development and the social value of benefiting mankind.

User value: old jobs disappear and new positions are born

Every industrial revolution will eliminate some old jobs and create a large number of new positions.

As Robin Li said at the conference, "After the invention of the steam engine, the job of carrying water from the well disappeared. However, many new professions were born in textile, metallurgy, papermaking, ceramics and other industries."

This is because the technological revolution will greatly increase productivity, thereby eliminating low-productivity jobs and creating higher-productivity jobs. This is the inevitable development of the times: 100 years ago, the coachman's job disappeared. 30 years ago, the typist job disappeared...

The current AI craze can help people complete some repetitive and tedious tasks through automation and intelligence, greatly improving productivity. People can invest more time and energy in areas that require higher-level thinking and decision-making, thereby improving their work capabilities.

As Robin Li said at the conference, generative AI will lead to a significant improvement in work efficiency in content creation, customer service, translation and other positions. For example, it takes a day for humans to draw a picture and costs hundreds of yuan, but using AI to draw a picture only takes a few seconds and costs only a few cents. ARK also predicts that generative AI can increase the efficiency of knowledge workers by 4 times.

This means that "life-generated AI" will generate stronger productivity and more new scenarios, thus generating more service demand and larger market space, which will in turn drive more employment demand and more new scenarios. Strong economic growth.

Behind the changes in the disappearance of old jobs and the birth of new positions is the inflection point of artificial intelligence. Big data, big computing power, and big models have led to the emergence of intelligence. At the same time, artificial intelligence has undergone a directional change, that is, from discriminative AI to generative AI. Search is a typical discriminative AI, and Baidu Wenxin is a generative AI.

In the global arena, many major manufacturers are deploying generative AI. Baidu is the first company among the world's major manufacturers to make generative AI products. That is Wen Xinyiyan, which makes people in the workplace more competitive. Become stronger.

For example, in the past, writing code required very professional knowledge and had extremely high barriers. Now, perhaps it can be easily grasped by using Baidu Wenxin. This means that people will have more equal access to technical capabilities and will be able to experience the services brought by technology more easily.

According to the International Labor Organization, the world will need to create more than 600 million new jobs by 2030. These new jobs must come from new industries created by innovation.

AI is the main force in these new industries.

Commercial value: old models exit and new industries enter

Any technological change must create business value while creating user value, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve sustainability.

In the future, generative AI will bring about a reshaping of production relations and industrial chains, bursting out huge commercial value.

As Robin Li said at the conference, "The best way to find out the answer is actually to look back on the past."

Looking back on the past four industrial revolutions, the first industrial revolution allowed the factory system to replace manual workshops; after the second revolution, emerging industrial sectors such as electrical, chemical, and petroleum emerged; the third industrial revolution allowed people to enter The information age has created a large number of new industries; the fourth industrial revolution has accelerated the development of new energy, bioengineering and other industries.

Each round of industrial revolution creates more industrial chains and also brings more job opportunities. The global economy has achieved sustained growth in this step-by-step progression.

Similarly, the current generative AI boom will also bring new economic value and a large number of employment opportunities. Last year, Sequoia Capital published an article titled "Generative AI: A Creative New World," mentioning that generative AI involves billions of artificial labor and has the potential to generate trillions of dollars in economic value.

So, in which areas will industrial opportunities and changes be born first? This depends on the underlying technology of generative AI.

Entering the AI ​​era, the technology stack of IT technology has changed. In the past, it was basically divided into three layers: chip layer, operating system layer and application layer. Now it can be divided into four layers: chip layer, framework layer, model layer and application layer. Baidu's full-stack layout is unique in the world and has leading competitiveness.

B-side companies that embrace Baidu’s AI platform and ecosystem may gain more first-mover advantages. At the same time, it will be easier to obtain opportunities in the three major industries:

The first is new cloud computing. In the past, enterprises mainly chose cloud vendors based on basic cloud services, computing power, and storage. Now they prefer cloud vendors that perform well and collaborate with each other at the four levels of model, framework, chip, and application. At present, Baidu has layout in these four levels, and its comprehensive strength ranks at the forefront. This also means that it can not only provide better cloud services, but also potentially change the rules of the game in the cloud computing market.

The second is fine-tuning of industry models. Each industry has its own unique data and development logic. There is a type of enterprise that is very familiar with the industry. At the same time, it is located in the middle layer between the general large model and industry customers. It can use the general large model to provide solutions to industry customers, greatly improving the industry. operating efficiency. Baidu Wenxin Large Model has released multiple industry large models in the fields of electric power, finance, media and other fields, and can provide excellent model support.

The third is application development: In the AI ​​era, all applications are developed based on large models, which may be 10 times the opportunity of the mobile Internet.

Based on text generation, image generation, audio generation, video generation and other scenarios, there will be many application service providers. The current generative AI/large model industry has spawned star startups that enable marketing, office, customer service, design and other scenarios, such as Notion, Jasper, DoNotPay and other applications. Wenxinyiyan can help them improve their application experience through technology and services.

In the technology industry that is aiming for the stars and the sea, technical strength is the booster for take-off.

Social Value: Old thinking fades away, new ideas burst out

The transformation of productivity and production relations will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the entire society.

What many people overlook is that the change in the way of thinking has the most far-reaching impact.

In the past four industrial revolutions, people's vision and imagination have been raised to new heights again and again. People have begun to explore the laws of nature and human society. Scientific and innovative ways of thinking have gradually become the mainstream, laying the foundation for the subsequent technological revolution. laid the foundation for thinking.

Similarly, the current generative AI craze is also breaking people’s perceptions time and time again. Robin Li mentioned at this conference, “The big model also redefines human-computer interaction, marketing and customer service. For any company, whoever has the best way to communicate with customers will have customers. ”

Right now, if your company has 7 billion customers, it is very difficult to provide good customer service at such a large scale. Even if you can do it, the experience will not be outstanding. With generative AI, every customer can have an exclusive, 24/7 professional customer service.

In fact, it is not because of the emergence of AI or large models that this service can be realized, but because the technology was not mature before, many people's thinking was limited and they would not think in this direction. Nowadays, technology is developing rapidly, coupled with bold innovative thinking, many things can be easily achieved.

The advancement of thinking is essentially driven by innovation. Innovation is the source of human development and progress and the driving force of the development of the times. As the times develop faster and better, it will bring more industries and jobs, and conversely it will bring risks.

Robin Li clearly mentioned at the conference, "The greatest danger to mankind, the greatest unsustainability, is not the uncertainty caused by innovation. On the contrary, we stop innovating, do not invent, create, or progress, and follow inertia. If this continues, the various unpredictable risks it will bring are the greatest threats to mankind."

Learning is like rowing upstream. The same goes for the progress of society and the development of the times.

Conclusion

Management master Drucker once pointed out that enterprises are organs of society, and any organization exists for a special purpose, mission and special social function.

Any enterprise survives because it meets the needs of a certain aspect of society and achieves some special social purpose.

Society needs innovative enterprises to build the ladder of progress. Through Robin Li’s speech at the conference, I further felt that Baidu is on the right path to innovation. This is also the underlying reason why Baidu regards "using technology to make the complex world simpler" as its mission.

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