Sina Science and Technology Yang Xuemei

On July 10, at the Aliyun Forum of the 2021 World artificial Intelligence Congress, Zebra Zhihang released the Tianfu AI platform, revealing the progress of on-board AI for the first time. Tianbao platform integrates the self-research technologies of Ali Damoyuan, Tmall Elf and Zebra Zhixing, precipitating AI interaction, AI awareness, AI scene service capabilities, and can achieve efficient automated processes, online continuous self-learning growth andFlexible output. Skyfall will be the first Roewe whale to hit the market in the fourth quarter.

During the conference, Wang Kai, vice president of Zebra Zhixing, accepted an exclusive interview with Sina Technology and shared the story behind the launch of Tianshui, as well as Zebra Zhihang's future development plans.

Tianshui solves the "three mountains" faced by automobile intellectualization

"We have made smart assistants for small heels, but the needs of every customer in the car industry are complex and personalized, so every car company wants to make a unique smart car. We feel that it is time to turn our experience into a platform or a tool to enable the car company to make the high-level, personalized car intelligence it wants."

Wang Kai said he hopes this ability will become the core gene of zebras. For this reason, the heavenly waterfall was born.

As for the strength of the zebra to build the Tianfu platform, Wang Kai said that in addition to the intelligent experience, data and capabilities accumulated by the zebra in the past few years, more importantly, with the reorganization of the zebra at the end of 2019, it became Alibaba.After being a member of the big zoo, Alibaba's AI skills and versatility can be used by zebras, such as Ali's multimodal pre-training model.

Zebra Zhixing is the first batch of technology enterprises in China to focus on automobile intelligence. It has polished and precipitated the leading algorithm technology and reliable on-board AI products through the five-year scene of millions of smart cars. On this basis, the strategically reorganized new zebra gained the blessing from the world's top algorithm technology and Tmall's voice ecological ability of the Dharma Academy, and built a strong technical base. It can be said that zebra AI Powered by Dharma house + Tmall genie. " He thinks.

What problem can Sky Waterfall solve? Wang Kai pointed out that the high technical threshold, the high cost investment, and the difficulty of experience optimization are the "three big mountains" that automobile companies are facing in building automobile intelligence:

First, the technical threshold is high. Not everyone can easily train a large-scale model with trillions of parameters, whether from the richness of data or from deep learning algorithms, including the support of a lot of machine computing power required by AI. A good AI must be built on a deep foundation in order to do well. Second, the input cost is large, including manpower input cost and data processing cost. "at the present stage, there is as much manpower as there is intelligence. Deep learning requires a lot of manual tagging to participate in it. "

Third, it may be easy to deliver smart products, but keeping them up-to-date and optimizing the experience is very difficult and costly. "the industry should pay more attention to the transition from delivery intelligence to growth intelligence, which is a big threshold."

Wang Kai said that Tianfu's goal is to help car companies cross these "three mountains" to create intelligent and leading car AI products.

It is understood that in the past year, after the AI intelligent assistant created by Zebra Zhixing went online, compared with the original system, user activity doubled, the number of intelligent services increased 14 times, covering more than 70 models of 28 brands, 3 million smart cars, and Tmall elf business, achieved 300 million IoT equipment vehicle interconnection.

Integrate the core basic technology of Dharma House, Tmall Elf and Zebra Zhihang, at the same time, the innovative technology of the small heel spot intelligent assistant will also precipitate in the Tianfu platform. At the same time, Tianfu platform technology is also rapidly enabling car companies, which will be the first to appear on the Roewe Whale, which went public in the fourth quarter.

Zebra integrated into Ali: participating in the process of industrial digitization in a vertical and horizontal direction

From childhood to the launch of the Tianshui platform, in fact, it is also an important stage after the zebra is integrated into the Ali family.

Prior to this, with the strategic reorganization of zebra network and AliOS, Alibaba Group became the largest shareholder. Joint CEO Zhang Chunhui made it clear that zebra network would continue to strengthen its R & D investment in the field of vehicle intelligent operating system and AI. Ali Damoyuan, flat-headed Brother and Tmall Elves will fully support zebras to improve product technology and capabilities, and help zebras build future-oriented intelligent car operating systems.

At present, "the real restructuring has taken place, and now it has gradually stabilized." Wang Kai revealed that this integration has undergone profound changes not only from the perspective of the team, but also from the business.

On the team, the two teams have been deeply integrated no matter in the direction of the operating system, or in the direction of artificial intelligence, the direction of industrial solutions, and the direction of digitization. "it is not a simple one. Internally, from every development team to the whole department, it is a kind of deep integration, and there will be reorganization at the organizational level."

Wang Kai said that the entire business of the zebra consists of a vertical and horizontal direction, with the intelligent operating system as the core vertically, and with the partners in the industry, from the underlying architecture of the car to the operating system, and then to the application of intelligent scenes, carry on the strategic cooperation of the overall solution, and work together to create the industry benchmark smart cars and car products. Horizontally, we should seize the opportunity of digitization of the automobile industry, collect Alibaba's basic advantages in the Internet of the service industry, and the experience of the zebra, deeply participate in the process of digitization of the automobile industry, and seize the business opportunities and opportunities inside.

According to reports, AI is an important part of the core strategy of zebra Zhixing's "OS+AI+ chip". The company has prepared to set up an intelligent interaction laboratory, an intelligent perception laboratory, and an intelligent service laboratory, with the goal of creating leading intelligent capabilities in three scenarios: interaction, driving and service, and realizing the integration of three intelligences.

The hotter the car industry is, the more opportunities there will be for zebras.

Talking about the car-building trend of technology companies, Wang Kai believes that this is also a good phenomenon for zebras. Enterprise car-building is not a problem to be solved by a single car factory or technology company, and it is impossible to take all in the whole chain. it will certainly stimulate a lot of demand, such as the demand for intelligence, how to make the car more intelligent, in which the technical threshold is high, the input cost is high, and it is difficult to continuously optimize the experience. Not all automakers have the strength to solve the problem on their own.

"the hotter the car-building industry is, the more opportunities there will be for the industry to dig in the future, and the zebra will definitely get a dividend in it." Wang Kai said. As for zebras, will they build cars in the future? He replied: at least there is no need to build cars for now. At this stage, the focus is to serve our customers in the automotive industry and help them create smart cars and smart products that meet or even exceed the expectations of current consumers.

As for the strategic direction of the zebra in the next five years or less. Wang Kai said that this is also an issue that the company has been exploring, and the future goal is to seize the opportunity of industrial change and serve B-end customers well.

"first of all, we have to seize this opportunity, because if we don't seize this opportunity, everything else may be castles in the air, so this is our current focus. Intelligence and digitization are the main line that zebras catch in the automobile industry." Wang Kai said.