Xunfei Xunhuo large model is the first to enter the "upgrade battle": the Chinese version of ChatGPT is here

Original: 36 krypton

The wave of large models detonated by ChatGPT continues.

According to incomplete statistics, since March this year, dozens of domestic companies have entered this track, and many have released related products. Among them, there are not only major Internet companies such as Ali, but also AI companies represented by SenseTime and Mobiz, and even big names such as Wang Xiaochuan and Wang Huiwen have returned to this track.

When Xunfei entered the game, there were already many products on the market. But the release of Spark is still eye-catching. From the enterprise end to the personal end, the experience of many users on the Xinghuo large model is that "it is almost one of the most similar large-scale model products to ChatGPT in the current domestic market."

Today, one month after the release of "Spark", HKUST Xunfei released the new progress of "Xunfei Xunhuo Cognitive Model" as scheduled. At this press conference, "Xinghuo" not only demonstrated the improvement of knowledge quiz, mathematics, multi-round dialogue, etc., but also released products such as Xinghuo APP and Xinghuo Speech Companion.

On the landing of applications, products such as Xinghuo Language Companion APP, post-medical diagnosis and rehabilitation management platform, Antelope industrial Internet platform, and Xunfei Hearing Smart Screen have all opened up Xunfei Xinghuo development interface. Xunfei will join hands with developers to build "Xinghuo" ecology.

"Today we released the latest results of the Xinghuo large model again as scheduled, because all our technology platforms are completely independently developed, and we are very confident that the technology at each stage is controllable." At the press conference , said Liu Qingfeng, chairman of HKUST Xunfei.

30 days of new upgrades

A month ago, HKUST Xunfei handed over its "answer sheet" in the field of large models: Xinghuo.

Once the "Spark" model was released, it sparked heated discussions in the industry. At that time, Liu Qingfeng, chairman of HKUST Xunfei, announced the timing of Spark’s three upgrades this year. He also said, “This year HKUST Xunfei will continue to upgrade the large model. On October 24, it will surpass ChatGPT in Chinese and match it in English. At a considerable level", the outside world also said that Xunfei Xinghuo is the only large-scale model manufacturer in China that clearly gives an upgrade time.

Now, the first upgrade is on schedule. On June 9, Xunfei officially released the Spark Cognitive Model V1.5. On the previous basis, "Spark" has been upgraded in the three comprehensive capabilities of open knowledge question and answer, logical reasoning and mathematical ability, and multi-round dialogue. Among them, the knowledge question and answer ability increased by 24%, and the logical reasoning ability increased by 10%.

The "emergence of wisdom" phenomenon brought about by large models is gradually affecting people's daily work and life. In the view of HKUST Xunfei, as a conversational AI system, the future development of large models will show six major trends, including changes in information distribution and acquisition modes, content production modes, and human-computer interaction modes.

Among them, the reconstruction of human-computer interaction is undoubtedly one of the most exciting technological innovations. In the era of the Internet of Everything, through algorithms to reconstruct the way of human-computer interaction, it is possible to realize multi-modal "human-like" natural dialogues between humans and machines, creating personalized assistants, which will inevitably further reduce learning costs and improve interaction efficiency.

At the press conference, Xinghuo also released APP products to improve the interactive experience of large models on the mobile phone. At the same time, 200+ assistants are officially launched on the Xinghuo APP, creating a new "application development" scenario, and in-depth user high-frequency scenarios such as workplace, life, travel, and writing. It not only supports personalized customization, but also supports creation, release and sharing.

Among them, the launch of the "Spark Assistant Creation Center" is eye-catching. At the scene, Xunfei asked it to "as a wedding host, write a cheerful and humorous wedding speech, citing scriptures, to bless the couple Guo Jing and Huang Rong." As a result, Xinghuo's outstanding performance won continuous applause from the scene.

**From the perspective of time, it is not too late for Xunfei to officially participate in the wave of large-scale models, but from the initial release to the current rapid upgrade, it has always attracted attention. The most important factor may be that its products have been displayed once they are released The effect exceeds people's expectations for ChatGPT-like products. **

Obviously, the emergence of such a product is not a one-day achievement, behind it is the technology accumulation of iFLYTEK over the past 20 years. 24 years ago, the Chinese voice market was controlled by international giants, and the domestic market was in a "stuck" state. At that time, HKUST Xunfei proposed to make China's voice technology the best in the world.

In recent years, HKUST Xunfei has also experienced difficulties, but Liu Qingfeng and the Xunfei team have always maintained their original entrepreneurial aspirations and worked hard to light the torch.

Today, 24 years later, Chinese companies are regaining the "right to speak" in the Chinese speech market. Now, with the dawn of general artificial intelligence brought by ChatGPT-like applications, a new round of sparks is being ignited.

As the "leader" of the Chinese voice market, Xunfei has always been at the forefront of technology, and has never spared investment in research and development. According to relevant data from Xunfei, in 2022, Xunfei will invest 3.36 billion yuan in research and development, accounting for 17.83% of revenue; the number of R&D personnel will reach 9,281, accounting for 61.68% of the company's total headcount.

The emergence of large models not only ignited the expectations of enterprises for general artificial intelligence, but also received great attention from the government.

In fact, as early as November 2021, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology had established a large-scale model working group of the Artificial Intelligence Engineering Promotion Committee. So far, it has absorbed more than 100 large-scale model member units from various industries, universities, research institutes, and jointly promoted the large-scale model standard system, Construction of assessment tests etc.

At the end of May this year, at the large model sub-forum of Hangzhou General Artificial Intelligence Forum and AIIA Artificial Intelligence Industry Development Conference, iFLYTEK was listed as the deputy leader unit of the large model working group under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

As the deputy leader unit of the large-scale model working group, iFLYTEK actively participates in the work of the working group, and is also one of the participating units of the large-scale model standard system of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

From product to application

The upgrade of large-scale model products is not surprising: whether it is OpenAI's ChatGPT or domestic large-scale model products, with the increase in the size of training data, product upgrades are a natural thing. The reason for the intensification of road competition.

Now, with the gradual emergence of various products, the large model has entered the key "upgrade battle". As a product that can "wrestle the wrist" in the market, Xunfei is one of them.

Judging from the Spark upgrade conference, in addition to mathematical ability, its ability in logical reasoning, knowledge question and answering, etc. is also approaching ChatGPT. As for mathematics, at the Spark press conference in May, Liu Qingfeng said that the Spark cognitive model has surpassed ChatGPT in terms of text generation and mathematical ability.

It coincides with the college entrance examination, and many students are also ushering in the first big exam in their lives. After the first day of the college entrance examination, Sohu Technology used five large AI models to test the same questions on the 2023 college entrance examination Shanghai mathematics test paper. In the test, Sohu Technology selected the first 10 fill-in-the-blank questions in the college entrance examination paper, and asked five big models including Xinghuo to answer them. The results show that Xunfei Xinghuo answered 5 questions correctly, with a correct rate of 50%, which is the highest among the same large models.

**Of course, the goal of Xinghuo is not limited to the upgrading of product capabilities. While actively training large models, Xinghuo also brings many real products in vertical fields such as education and medical care. **

In December last year, when ChatGPT just attracted the attention of the industry, iFlytek launched the "1+N" cognitive large-scale model special research, of which 1 of course refers to the general cognitive large model, and N refers to the education, medical Landing in other fields.

At the press conference of the Xinghuo Cognitive Large Model in May, Liu Qingfeng also said, "Today, to see whether a large model system is good or not, we must first see whether it can solve the rigid needs and whether it is really useful, not a simple one. Single point testing".

In fact, at the previous press conference, Xunfei has demonstrated the application of Spark in education, medical care, voice and other fields. Take Xunfei Hearing, which users are familiar with, as an example. After the large model is added to the application, it can analyze the text content through AI, and can generate abstracts, promotional copywriting, news releases and other specific needs with one click.

In this press conference, Xinghuo further demonstrated the latest achievements in the fields of learning, medical treatment, and office work.

In terms of medical care, Xunfei Smart Medical Assistant has given priority to large-scale applications. The test shows that Xunfei Smart Medical Assistant scored 456 points, exceeding 96.3% of the human test, and is the first product in the world to pass the test of a national-level licensed physician. Relevant data show that 250 million patients are discharged from hospital every year in my country, but only 1.88 million doctors are above mid-level, and most patients are discharged immediately after discharge.

Based on this phenomenon, Xunfei launched a post-diagnosis rehabilitation management platform. Wu Xiaoru, President of HKUST Xunfei, introduced that the data shows that the management efficiency of doctors has increased by more than 10 times, and the follow-up rate and consultation response rate of patients in the recovery process have reached 100%. The satisfaction rate is above 98%. At present, this platform has been supported by the Xinghuo Cognitive Large Model, and the human-machine coupling ensures the safety of patients and realizes 7*24 hours of all-weather response.

In addition, the Xunfei Hearing smart screen product based on the large model can realize functions such as AI refinement of meeting content, automatic generation of to-do items, etc., empowering the large model to the super smart terminal in the conference room, realizing synchronization of words and sounds, and flexible transcription and translation. Meeting minutes and to-do items can be generated with one click.

After being empowered by the large model, the AI speaking assistant developed by Xunfei was officially upgraded to the Xinghuo Language Companion APP, which provides AI speaking teachers for college students and business people, who can correct pronunciation and grammar errors in real time. In addition, users can also use video conversations to communicate face-to-face with the virtual human teacher and practice speaking in person.

The evolutionary path of the Chinese version of ChatGPT

From the positive feedback on Xinghuo from the outside world within a month, to the current upgrade of "Xinghuo" as scheduled, it is not difficult to see that Xinghuo is becoming one of the big models closest to ChatGPT in China.

At the press conference in May, Liu Qingfeng said that Spark will catch up with ChatGPT as a whole by the end of October. At that time, the Xinghuo cognitive model had just come out, and the outside world held a lot of skepticism about this statement. However, with the large-scale internal testing of Xinghuo, users are increasingly looking forward to the arrival of this critical moment after experiencing it first-hand.

Now, after an all-round upgrade, the gap between Spark and ChatGPT is getting smaller and smaller. Based on the past technology accumulation and the establishment of an established team, each module of Spark has achieved independent research and development, and the software and hardware platforms are made in China. run on the platform.

** But more importantly, Starfire is not running blindfolded without looking back. As mentioned earlier, while developing model capabilities, Xinghuo is also actively exploring the application scenarios of large models. **

Liu Qingfeng also said frankly: "HKUST Xunfei has always believed that the development of artificial intelligence is by no means a matter for a single enterprise or a single scientific research institution, but requires everyone's cooperation and win-win."

It is widely believed in the industry that the emergence of ChatGPT is the "iPhone moment" in the AI world. Objectively speaking, it has indeed attracted a wide range of developers. In fact, Xunfei has been on the open platform for many years. Today, it is adding the Spark Cognitive Model to empower developers to create more valuable AI applications.

As of May, the Xunfei open platform now has more than 4 million real-name certified developers and more than 5 million partners. With the release of the Xinghuo large model, the Xunfei open platform can lower the threshold of technology development in the future, help more developers to complete a lot of smart work, and integrate more and more professional plug-ins to make the ecosystem more prosperous. At present, Xunfei has reached clear cooperation intentions with more than 3,000 companies in 36 industries.

With the launch of the "2023 iFLYTEK AI Spark Camp Ecological Plan", iFLYTEK may provide developers in various industries with multi-dimensional resources such as technology empowerment, solution creation, event operation, business operation, and entrepreneurship support to promote large-scale models. application landing.

It is worth mentioning that at today's press conference, the Spark Cognitive Large Model Development Interface was officially released, including the seven dimensions and the capabilities corresponding to 200+ assistants. At the same time, Xinghuo supports fast integration within 30 minutes to meet the access of multiple terminals such as PCs; it provides customized optimization services for SFT fine-tuning and continuous version upgrades.

In addition, Xunfei also launched the University AI Spark Camp. The first batch of 22 key universities will give priority to opening Spark experience accounts and guide the innovative application of large-scale model technology research and development.

Write at the end

The term emergence, originally proposed by Bertalanffy, the father of general system theory, refers to the phenomenon that individual simple rules start, but lead to unpredictable complex results.

American psychologist John Holland pointed out in his classic book "Emergence: From Chaos to Order" that "emergent systems are everywhere: ant communities, neural networks, immune systems, the Internet, and even the world economy. The complexities of simple behaviors that make up an individual can be called emergence."

The advent of the large model has accelerated the pace of the emergence of intelligence. The era of emerging intelligence is coming. Naturally, Chinese technology companies will not miss this opportunity, and Xunfei Xinghuo is one of them.

From product capability upgrades, product applications to co-construction of ecology, based on years of technology accumulation, iFLYTEK is iterating in an orderly and rapid manner in the field of large models.

It is worth mentioning that on August 15th, the second iteration of the "Spark" model focused on the upgrading of code capabilities and the improvement of multi-modal interaction capabilities may be worth looking forward to.