Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1615
From congressional hearings to TED conferences, two conversations funded by the week
This week, TikTok CEO Zhou was funded to attend the TED 2023 conference in Vancouver, Canada, and accepted an exclusive interview with TED founder Chris Anderson (Chris Anderson). This is Zhou Shouzi’s first public interview since he attended a U.S. congressional hearing last month.
Compared with the “trial” a month ago, when there was almost no chance to make a full statement , reporters attending the TED live event said that this time it was more like a chat between friends, and Anderson may have given up on some sensitive issues. Since the interview video has not yet been launched on the TED official website, we know that Zhou Shouzi said at least the following things based on the clips posted by the audience on social networks and media reports:
About data security
- TikTok never stores data in China.
- But in the non-Oracle servers in the US and Singapore, there is some legacy data to be deleted, “deletion is a very large engineering effort. So, as I said in the hearing, it will take a while for us to delete them, but I It is expected to be completed this year.”
- Reiterate the “Texas Plan”, which is to migrate the US operating system to Oracle’s data center in Texas, which will be operated and supervised by US employees of US companies. Other narratives, such as allowing third-party agencies to review codes and avoiding foreign government interference, were also stated in his previous hearings. The latter in particular, he said “We’re building all the tools to prevent any of these behaviors from happening. And I’m pretty confident that with the unprecedented level of transparency we’re providing on the platform, we can reduce that risk to as low a level as possible.” “.
About User Safety and Child Protection
- Much of the moderation on TikTok is done by machines, but there is still a team of tens of thousands of moderators based in Ireland.
- “The machines are good, they’re pretty good, but they’re not as good as you know them to be. So you have to supplement it with a lot of people today… Based on that, we built a review team of tens of thousands of people to work with the machines to identify bad content and proactively remove it from the platform”.
- Reiterate the platform’s restrictions on underage users and its community guidelines to prevent harmful content. And, in addition to requiring users to tell their age when they sign up, TikTok also offers tools to scan people’s public profiles and “try to match the age you say to the video you just posted.”
About the Addictiveness of Short Videos
- When Anderson said that “it’s in your interest to keep users in your app for as long as possible…that’s how ad revenue flows,” Zhou said, “As a company, our goal is not to optimize and maximize spend. time”, and said that it will take this matter seriously.
- “We really encourage parents to have a conversation with their kids about what is the right amount of time to use … As a business, we think that balance needs to be struck.”
- “If you’re spending too much time on our platform, we’ll send you an unsolicited video telling you it’s time to leave.”
- “What we do is show people what they like based on our machine learning algorithms. We provide a platform for ordinary people to be discovered, as long as you have talent, you will be heard and you have a chance to succeed. “
Finally, Anderson praised Zhou Shouzi as “very convincing and attractive as a CEO” and ended the conversation with a TikTok video he co-produced. Outside of relatively light-hearted interviews, U.S. regulatory pressure on TikTok and Zhou Shouzi has been there, with a recent local media poll finding that 41 percent of U.S. adults said they supported the federal government’s ban on TikTok. (Lin Guangying)
OpenAI co-founder: To get AI right, everyone needs to be involved
This week, Greg Brockman, co-founder, chairman and president of OpenAI, opened the TED 2023 conference with a demonstration of ChatGPT and various plug-in combinations. He tried to reassure people that AI does not run completely in a black box, and humans can intervene and correct in the process at any time.
He first opened a ChatGPT chat page that users are familiar with, asked ChatGPT to recommend what to eat for dinner, and then drew a picture. After ChatGPT described the content of the dinner in text, it called an image generation tool by itself, and generated a picture of dinner for the description.
After that, ChatGPT can also call different plug-ins to complete various tasks, such as displaying natural language prompts used to generate images and links to generated images (this feature will be available to all users in the next few months), using InstaCart tools to generate Shopping list, self-tweeting, checking the correctness of self-generated answers on the Internet and writing a detailed search process for each step (ChatGPT successfully found its mistakes and gave the correct answer).
He also explained the process of training ChatGPT. The first step is to input a lot of information and materials to ChatGPT and let him learn by himself. But more importantly, the second step is to let AI learn how to judge “good/bad” through human feedback.
When initially showing GPT-4 to Khan Academy, the OpenAI team found that sometimes the model could not correctly point out the student’s calculation error, and pretended that the student’s calculation was correct and continued to run. So, the team spent several months collecting feedback data to teach the AI ”when you encounter this situation, you should object.” When the AI encounters the same problem a few months later, it will directly point out the human error.
When users are using ChatGPT, every time they click the “Thumb Down” button below the answer, they are actually expressing similar negative feedback. As the number of AI application scenarios increases, similar “bugs” will continue to be discovered by people all over the world, and they will provide continuous feedback to help AI become better.
Greg Brockkman believes that this feedback process is necessary and can only be done by opening ChatGPT to the world, because a single team cannot provide the large amount of high-quality feedback needed for AI evolution in the laboratory.
When questioned whether it is sure that expanding the scale of human feedback will definitely bring AI to the direction of “truth and wisdom”, and whether it is too reckless to release ChatGPT when humans have not yet established the “guardrail”, Greg said, “You have to push the limits of the technology to really see it in action, and only then can you know, oh, that’s what we should do next.”
He believes that the technology has not been pushed to the limit so far.
The host Chris Anderson compared AI to Pandora’s box, opening it later will usher in disaster later, so that human beings have time to be more fully prepared to deal with it. But Greg thinks AI is more like a nuclear weapon. Regardless of whether ChatGPT is trained or not, the underlying technologies such as chips and algorithms will continue to improve. “If you don’t put them together, it’s just hanging there. If someone gets connected one day, it will suddenly appear an extremely powerful thing, and no one has time to adjust and deal with it.”
At the end of his speech he said, “What I believe deeply is that for AI to be correct, everyone needs to participate… This is for us to make better rules… Frankly, this is one of the reasons we released ChatGPT .”
The problem is that we cannot expect everything to go according to our expectations and plans. (Intern Meng Xiaohan)
U.S. retailers expect inventory buildup to last at least through second half
According to a supply chain survey conducted by US financial media CNBC earlier this month, 36% of managers expect inventory levels to return to normal in the second half of this year, and 42% of managers expect excess inventory to continue until next year or even longer.
More inventory means more warehouse operating costs such as rent and employee salaries, and risks such as product loss, deterioration, and expiration. With many warehouses and distribution centers full, companies have been using containers, trailers, etc. to temporarily store goods for months.
After encountering cost pressure, retailers often think of passing on the cost to consumers through price increases at the first time, and only consider price cuts after sales decline and inventory is further backlogged. As inflation continues, except for a few luxury goods companies, most consumer brands are currently in the stage of reducing prices and clearing inventory.
For example, Procter & Gamble (P&G) has decided to increase discounts on almost all of its products such as shaving cream, laundry detergent and toilet paper, because the company has discovered that consumers are switching to cheaper competing products.
Excess inventory also reduces freight logistics. According to data monitored by fleet operations platform Motive, truck visits to the North American distribution centers of the world’s top five retailers at the end of last month were about 80% of those in the same period in 2022 and 65% of those in the same period in 2021. The decline in warehouse visits indicates both weaker consumer demand and fewer shipments of goods from warehouses to stores; it also means that retailers consume more existing inventory and reduce replenishment from suppliers.
This may further affect manufacturing and foreign trade orders across the ocean. According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, counting March of this year, China’s exports to the United States have decreased for eight consecutive months, and the total value of goods exported to the United States in the first quarter fell by 17% year-on-year. (Qiu Hao)
Tech Weekly丨How Google countered OpenAI and Microsoft; over 4 million people have used Notion AI
Earlier this month, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Sundar Pichai) was asked what he missed by not launching a chatbot before ChatGPT, he said that Google was not the first to launch products in many areas, such as search engines. , browser, etc.
“Sometimes it is important to be the first, but sometimes it doesn’t matter.” He believes that what is more important is to continuously improve products, make better models, and achieve better functions. By this week, the specific actions taken by Google were released intensively:
- In addition to improving the original search engine with the chatbot Bard, Google is developing a new search engine called Magi, which can actively predict the needs of users and provide users with a personalized experience. Currently in internal testing. It was previously reported that Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the device’s default search.
- Google has integrated artificial intelligence research teams Google Brain and DeepMind. Although they all belong to Google, they have not cooperated very much before, and the code will not be shared. Pichai said the integration could “significantly accelerate Google’s progress in artificial intelligence.” The new team, called Google DeepMind, will be led by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
At the same time, ChatGPT continues to infiltrate people’s daily life in various forms:
- Notion said this week that 4 million people have used Notion AI. Notion AI is a writing aid tool developed by Notion using OpenAI’s model interface, which can help people write manuscripts, summarize document summaries, and do translations. Notion previously claimed that it has 20 million active users and that the penetration rate of AI has reached 20%.
- Japan’s Yokosuka City issued a statement this week that about 4,000 employees in its municipal office began to use ChatGPT to work, including but not limited to conception, drafting of administrative documents, planning activities, etc., to alleviate the shortage of local civil servants and busy affairs.
ChatGPT is not unstoppable. Data regulators in France, Germany, and Ireland are also investigating OpenAI after Italy banned ChatGPT due to possible violations of European data protection regulations. If OpenAI is proven to be violating data regulations, it needs to adjust its user data collection strategy or face heavy fines or shutdown. (He Qianming)
OTHER NEWS
The first anniversary of the implementation of the personal pension system, there are currently over 650 products and nearly 30 million households participating.
On April 21 last year, the “Opinions on Promoting the Development of Personal Pensions” was released. In November, the China Securities Regulatory Commission released the first batch of personal pension investment fund products and sales agencies, which were implemented in 36 leading cities (regions) at the end of the month. According to statistics, there are currently 658 personal pension products, over 70% of which are savings deposits, and the rest are public funds, commercial pension insurance, and wealth management products. According to the “Securities Daily”, as of the end of February, nearly 30 million people had opened personal pension accounts, of which 9 million had deposited funds. The average household is about 2,000 yuan. This time last year, we covered the impact of personal pensions on individuals .
The National Development and Reform Commission said China’s economy had “expanded demand, recovered supply and improved expectations”.
The National Development and Reform Commission held a press conference a few days ago, summarizing the economic development in the first quarter as “demand expansion, supply recovery, and expected improvement.” Compared with the triple pressure of “demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations” proposed at the end of 2021, Xinhua News Agency stated that economic development this year has “recovered for the better”, but at the same time it also stated that “the foundation for recovery is not yet solid.”
The National Development and Reform Commission also stated that it is stepping up research and drafting of policy documents on restoring and expanding consumption, mainly focusing on key areas such as stabilizing bulk consumption, improving service consumption, and expanding rural consumption. The People’s Bank of China’s first-quarter survey showed that personal consumption and investment willingness to pick up, while the National Bureau of Statistics’ consumption data in the first quarter has surpassed that before the epidemic .
Liu Qiangdong was allowed to exercise 9.2 million JD Class A ordinary shares.
According to the 2022 annual report of Jingdong Group, Liu Qiangdong, the chairman of the group, was allowed to exercise the expired options within the first 60 days of this year, thereby obtaining 9.2 million Class A ordinary shares of Jingdong, estimated at the current closing price of Jingdong, worth more than 1.1 billion yuan . Referring to the 2022 equity incentive exercise price of the entire JD Group, the cost may be around US$7 per share. In 2022, Liu Qiangdong was allowed to exercise 18.2 million JD Class A ordinary shares.
In 2023, the number of college graduates across the country will exceed 11 million for the first time.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the number of college graduates is expected to reach 11.58 million in 2023, an increase of 820,000 from the previous year, and it is the first time that the number of college graduates in the country has exceeded 11 million. At the same time, the State Council has decided to continue the implementation of the national student loan interest-free and principal deferred repayment policy. It is estimated that the scale of loan interest exemption will be about 2.325 billion yuan in 2023, and the scale of deferred principal repayment that can be applied for is about 5.5 billion yuan.
Carlyle is considering introducing new investors to McDonald’s China.
Carlyle is considering bringing in new investors for its investment in McDonald’s China business, valuing the business at between $8 billion and $10 billion. Currently, McDonald’s China is jointly controlled by Carlyle and CITIC’s Trustar Capital. Carlyle may sell some of its stake in the deal but retain control, according to people familiar with the matter.
SHEIN plans to invest USD 150 million in Brazil to establish a clothing supply chain network.
SHEIN announced on Thursday that it will invest US$148.9 million in Brazil and cooperate with 2,000 factories to manufacture ready-made garments. It is expected to create 100,000 jobs by 2026, and 85% of local sales will come from local factories or sellers. The management said that it plans to ship raw materials to Brazil for production. Although labor costs are slightly higher, it can reduce commodity logistics costs and better adjust inventory. At present, the Brazilian government imposes a 60% tariff on cross-border e-commerce products such as SHEIN. Previously, “LatePost” introduced in detail the “small order and quick response” production mode that SHEIN relies on for success.
Prada plans to invest 60 million euros this year to increase the production capacity of the knitting factory.
Italian luxury brand Prada recently announced that it plans to invest 60 million euros in industrial capital this year, a large part of which will be used to double the size of its knitting factories in Italy. It also said it was considering small-scale acquisitions of other manufacturers, with a focus on new technologies. The company currently produces 10 percent of its clothing in-house. Previously, Prada also said that it will hire more than 400 new employees in Italy this year to strengthen production capacity. Last year, Prada’s global sales surged 24%.
The price increase worked, and Mercedes-Benz’s first-quarter profit exceeded expectations.
Mercedes-Benz’s revenue from January to March this year increased by 17% year-on-year, and its return on sales (net profit after tax/sales) was 14.8%, exceeding market expectations. Management cited good pricing, product mix, and volume growth. Mercedes-Benz announced a year ago that it would upgrade its strategy and that entry is “luxury” . In the first quarter of this year, it sold 504,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Among them, sales of electric vehicles doubled to 52,000 units year-on-year, and sales of high-end cars such as Maybach increased by 18% year-on-year to 92,000 units.
The Chinese version of MOBA mobile game, which has successfully launched overseas, has been approved to operate for a fee.
In April, the domestic game version number was officially released, with a total of 86 games, including the MOBA mobile game “Decisive Victory” of Mutong Technology (acquired by ByteDance for US$4 billion). The overseas version of the game ranked 5th in downloads and 7th in revenue in Sensor Tower’s ranking of China’s overseas mobile games in February this year, and its monthly activity will exceed 100 million in 2021. But in the Chinese market, it will face competition from Honor of Kings, which has 150 million monthly active users. It is said that the game has been tested in the national server before, and the official launch time has not yet been announced.
Facebook users can now apply for settlement payments, but they may get very little.
Starting this week, anyone who has been a Facebook user in the United States for the past 15 years can apply online for a settlement payment. It’s not clear how much will be distributed, but there are more than 200 million Facebook users in the United States, and after deducting legal fees (up to 25%) and other administrative expenses, each person’s share may be small. In December, Meta agreed to pay a $725 million settlement for leaking the data of 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica.
The price increase drove the global wine trade to a new high last year.
According to the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), global wine export prices will rise by 14% year-on-year in 2022, driving the overall trade volume to a new high of 37.6 billion euros. However, problems such as the Russian-Ukrainian war, the energy crisis, and supply chain disruptions caused wine consumption to drop by 1% to 23.2 billion liters.
Driven by the Chinese market, the revenue of Ray-Ban’s parent company increased by 8.6% in the first quarter.
Luxury eyewear brands Oakly (Oakly) and Ray-Ban (Ray-Ban) parent company EssilorLuxottica’s revenue in the first quarter rose 8.6% year-on-year to 6.15 billion euros. Thanks to the recovery in demand after the easing of the epidemic in China, the Asia-Pacific region was the company’s best-performing region in the first quarter. Sales in the latter quarter increased by 12% to 750 million euros. The trend in China “continues to be strong,” the company’s CFO said.
Fanlin, ASML, etc. expect the Chinese market revenue to increase significantly.
Both semiconductor equipment makers are forecasting a surge in sales in China in the coming quarters, mostly in less advanced chip-making equipment, which still makes most of the chips used in fields such as cars, and Chinese fabs are still running low. actively expanding. Another part of the reason for the concentrated release of revenue is that semiconductor equipment manufacturers need to clarify specific restrictions due to the introduction of new regulations in the United States, which has delayed the delivery of some Chinese orders. Lam said hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment that was initially thought to be banned was eventually allowed to be exported. ASML also stated that the backlog of orders owed to customers in mainland China accounted for 20% of the total orders, worth nearly 60 billion yuan.
Airlines are using AI to plan ultra-long-haul flights.
Route planning programs can help pilots avoid bad weather and tell them when to slow down to save fuel. Determining the best flight route for an airplane is much more complicated than vehicle navigation on the ground. The challenges include air traffic control, military, weather, and cost. The longer the route, the more important it is to choose the most economical route. At this time, a large amount of data analysis and AI are required intervention.
The founder of an Indian IT service outsourcing giant believes that GPT cannot replace humans.
Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, said in an interview this week that ChatGPT is a good helper for generating content and performing certain tasks such as writing papers, but it is only a tool and will not become a substitute for humans. is the most powerful imaginative machine, and nothing can defeat the human mind.” In 1981, Murthy founded Infosys with six engineers to provide IT outsourcing services. Infosys became the first Indian company to be listed on NASDAQ in 1999, and landed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. Today, it has 346,000 employees worldwide and a market value of US$65 billion.
Lanvin, the luxury goods group owned by Fosun, posted revenue of 425 million euros last year and narrowed its losses.
Lanvin Group’s revenue increased by 38% year-on-year last year. Among them, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa increased by more than 40% year-on-year, contributing more than half of the revenue, while China and the United States increased by 13% and 35% respectively. The group posted a full-year loss of 72 million euros (adjusted EBITDA), although margins improved. Lanvin Group has luxury brands such as Lanvin and Sergio Rossi, especially focusing on emerging markets. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange SPAC at the end of last year, with a valuation of about US$1 billion.
The amount of venture capital investment in the Web3 field has declined for five consecutive quarters.
According to Crunchbase data, in the first quarter, the amount of venture capital investment in the global Web3 field (encryption and blockchain) fell by 82% year-on-year to US$1.7 billion, falling for five consecutive quarters. The number of deals fell 77% YoY to 333 deals. The number of large rounds over $100 million dropped from 29 to 2. However, Bitcoin and Ethereum are up 80% and 70%, respectively, since the beginning of the year.
Credit Suisse bondholders sue Swiss regulator.
Credit Suisse bondholders have launched legal action against Swiss financial regulator FINMA, challenging Swiss law in writing down its 16 billion Swiss franc AT1 bond. In March, Swiss regulators “erased” a total of 16 billion Swiss francs of AT1 bonds from the terms of the deal to facilitate UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse, with bondholders losing out on their own. Shareholders are outraged by the higher security priority.
Jaguar Land Rover will invest £15 billion in its electrification transition.
Jaguar Land Rover has announced that it will invest £15 billion ($18.7 billion) in electric vehicles and autonomous driving technology over the next five years. Jaguar Land Rover’s transformation plan includes transforming its Halewood factory in the UK into an all-electric factory, launching its first medium-sized battery Range Rover model in 2025, and becoming an “electric-first modern luxury carmaker” by 2030.
BuzzFeed News will lay off 15% of its workforce and plans to wind down operations.
BuzzFeed News, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021, will lay off 15% of its staff (about 180 people) and plans to terminate the business due to business challenges such as reduced revenue, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said in a report on Thursday. . Chief Financial Officer Edgar Hernandez, Chief Operating Officer Christian Baesler and other management will also leave.
Amazon’s Whole Foods is cutting hundreds of jobs.
Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, plans to cut hundreds of jobs as it plans to restructure over the next two months. Whole Foods currently has about 105,000 employees, and the layoffs accounted for less than 0.5% of Whole Foods’ global workforce. Previously, in its 2022 annual shareholder letter, Amazon hinted that it was looking for a more mass-market, better-automated grocery store model. And Whole Foods is positioned in the high-end market, which can meet the grocery store needs of wealthy shoppers, and does not have broad appeal to the public.
Using ChatGPT to answer math questions, Higgz hopes to seek more than $100 million in financing.
Startup Higgz has announced that it will incorporate ChatGPT into its service and is seeking upwards of $100 million in a new funding round. The startup’s main business is an online tutoring service for high school and college mathematics in the western market. TutorEva, which allows users to scan math problems to get answers, currently has hundreds of thousands of users. Its CEO, Joey Sun, said the rise of ChatGPT has driven interest from potential investors in AI-related businesses.
Twitter reserves the blue V certification for LeBron James and Stephen King, and Musk says he will pay for it.
Twitter has begun to cancel the blue V certification of users who have not paid, except for a very few celebrities such as basketball star LeBron James and science fiction writer Stephen King. They both publicly stated earlier that they would not pay for Twitter certification. A Twitter employee recently emailed James, saying he had certified free subscriptions for his account on behalf of CEO Elon Musk. Stephen King tweeted that he neither subscribed to Blue V, nor provided his mobile phone number to Twitter, and Musk replied “you’re welcome” below.
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