Artificial intelligence is not intelligent

Isn't the artificial intelligence of the unmanned car Kiwibot in the University of California at Berkeley?

A number of foreign media “disclosed” this artificial intelligence unmanned vehicle in mid-September, only to let the outside world know that this red car is remotely operated manually in Colombia – each person can control up to three robots, hourly wages. Less than $2.

Kiwi Campus, the company behind the net red drone, was a bit annoyed, and he explained a lot about it. While public opinion has been questioned, most of them have overlooked one point: the startup has already received seven rounds of "seed round" financing, totaling $2 million, or about 14.3 million.

Many netizens said that this incident is reminiscent of a long-lasting joke: After the ATM self-service cash machine, there is always a bank employee who is responsible for helping users swipe their cards, pay for them, and withdraw cash. Some people in the technology circle ridiculed that it is not "intelligent" after "artificial intelligence" leaves "manual".

It can be said that AI is a basket and everything can be loaded. In the many entrepreneurial projects in the entrepreneurial circle, how many “artificial intelligence” is true intelligence, and how many “artificial intelligence” is true “artificial”? I am afraid it is difficult to come up with a result.

Nowadays, with the appearance of many reports, the public has discovered that there are unmanned supermarkets that are charged, some smart bookstores that are guarded by people, AI chat applications that are accompanied by chat, and self-help payment that has been assisted, etc., have already surfaced.

Then, behind some fake intelligence and true "artificial", what kind of ambiguity is there in the makers and ventures? Are these self-deceptive projects getting what they want?

No artificial, no intelligence

In the South Waiting Hall of Qingdao Waiting Station, a convenience supermarket has attracted many tourists. Just because this is an intelligent "unmanned supermarket" that has long been seen in newspapers.

However, when I understood the notes, some visitors were disappointed when they walked into the supermarket. Because in this unmanned supermarket, an aunt stood at the checkout counter. Many curious travelers turned and left under the disappointment, and even more passengers muttered "the goods are not right".

When asked why someone in the supermarket did not collect money, the aunt who was responsible for the cashier said coldly: "The flow of people is too large, and the smart self-checkout equipment can't cope, so the artificial cash register mode is restored. This is to improve efficiency. The machine is too busy."

Coincidentally, because of the "busy but not coming" reason, a founding enterprise in Shenzhen also quietly hired "manual" to operate its many artificial smart coffee machines. The company's former employee Yang Wei (a pseudonym) revealed that the reason for manipulating equipment is also helpless.

This artificial intelligence creation company established in 2017 is mainly engaged in the research and development, launch and operation of smart coffee machines and fast food equipment. Take the coffee machine of the company as an example. The slogan describes that the user only needs to look at the screen prompt in front of the coffee machine and simply answer “personal preference”, then he can buy a special “special coffee” for himself.

“This is not as simple as a vending machine. It can modulate the concentration and style of coffee drinks according to the user's preferences. It can also help users who do not drink coffee to choose the right type of coffee.” When referring to this set Yang Wei is still quite proud of the equipment he has participated in.

He told me to understand the notes, these smart coffee machines can also record the user's personal preferences through the user account, and can change the coffee of different tastes according to the season. The first batch of four devices were placed in the densely populated business district in Nanshan District. “Many office workers like to drink coffee and love Starbucks. It is exactly this.”

In the beginning, the company only placed four devices in a business district in Nanshan, Shenzhen. Because the market feedback is very good, the market propaganda has also kept up, and soon I got a 5 million yuan A round of financing. Since then, the team has rapidly expanded its fleet of people and increased the number of equipment from four to ten.

However, the problem also arises at this time. The increasing number of users has enabled the “artificial intelligence” system, which was able to process large amounts of user information in batches and support the automatic sale of brewed coffee. There have been repeated bugs and even errors – the coffee taste is wrong, the capacity is wrong, and even suddenly it is down. There are more and more user complaints. "Before you have to send engineers to check on duty, monitor the operation of the equipment in real time. If there are more problems, you must select and deploy coffee through the background manual assistance (system)."

In the company's internal statement, this is just an expedient measure of the system's "busy", and it will definitely improve and iterate this intelligent system as soon as possible. However, such an expedient is used for more than half a year. "There are some contradictions in the team, and the capital side is putting pressure on it, so using artificial intelligence is the most effective way."

Nowadays, Yang Wei, who has left because of personal reasons, often goes to the coffee machine to look at the coffee machine and recollect the work experience. He didn't know whether the system was perfect after he left the company. Now, whether he still has to manually intervene manually, but this is also a valuable experience on his own road to artificial intelligence.

If there is a "manual" behind the smart coffee machine system to help users choose and modulate themselves, then some artificial intelligence entrepreneurial projects can only be described as fraud.

The smart little program is "Little Yellow Chicken"?

"Fortunately, I have jumped out, or I have to be stupid for a long time."

Li Dan (pseudonym), who just resigned from a research and development company in Dongguan a month ago, mentioned that the artificial intelligence products that were operated before were still very ridiculous. She told me to understand the notes, the company's products are a set of artificial intelligence small programs that are independently developed, which can help the riders to purchase the "most suitable" models.

Since its launch in early 2018, this small program has been popular among many 4S stores and comprehensive car dealerships in Guangdong, and has been carried on the dealer's own WeChat public account. As long as the consumer simply enters the description of the car's scene and the individual's budget, the smart applet can recommend the most suitable model for the user's reference through the "machine learning intelligent algorithm". “The idea at the time was to be able to search all models of a single brand or to provide a full-brand intelligent search version of the automotive market.”

Li Dan told me to understand the notes. When the program was developed, it was said that as long as the user sent the request, the system would grab the keywords in the text and match the massive model database through the algorithm. If the favored model is a car, the majority of self-driving travel, the budget is about 150,000 yuan, etc., will match the corresponding models sold to reply, "In fact, the matching models are basically set two or three models, The system is just a simple question and answer trigger."

It turns out that this set of intelligent car selection applications that can be “questionable” is essentially a set of chat robots, some of which are similar to the automatic reply of the WeChat public account, or the “small yellow chicken” (the question and answer robot) that was once popular. .

After the project was promoted through various channels, it was quickly financed. The founder and the technical director conducted another round of “significant iterations”, that is, the use of voice to submit the demand for the car, and became the “artificial intelligent voice interactive car selection system”. .

Of course, the background only captures the keywords in the user's voice through the third-party speech recognition program, and mechanically matches the "standard answer" to recommend the so-called most suitable model to the user. "This way, the car dealer is also a dealer. Yeah, after a few times, I will find the problem, and certainly I will not buy it." Li Dan said.

Under the pressure of all aspects, in order to make this program more like "artificial intelligence", and to provide flexible matching results, the company decided to adopt the "manual response" method to replace the original chat robot response mechanism. The reason is very simple, the manual query retrieval is "cheaper" - as long as the user's needs are collected, the relevant personnel will have more results in the background than Baidu.

“Management also said that such a startup is not a minority. We are only responsible for the data and the investors.” Li Dan added that although the results of “manual” recommendations are more targeted, they will be more in line with the actual needs of consumers. However, the response efficiency is slow: after all, manually search for results on the search engine, then copy and paste the answer.

In order to cope with the "new artificial intelligence" efficiency changes, the company has set up a so-called "queuing mode" in the program interaction. After uploading the demand, it takes a while to get the so-called "smart analysis results." As for the queuing time, it is the time taken to "manually" query the requirements and match the answers.

"Before leaving the company, the company said that it is going to be on the line with a set of artificial intelligence problem solving programs in the K12 field (the original project is yellow), and it is estimated that it is also a manual answer." She reluctantly said.

Many times the artificial intelligence of this entrepreneurial project is just for VC. Investors are not all stupid, and sometimes such projects are funded. One is to find the pick-up man as soon as possible, but to get the public to pay. How many young parents have not been sung by the artificial intelligence robots that can sing and dance, "Fudge" to obey the posts?

The "smart" of dancing robots

“Before, this artificial robot that danced has appeared in many places.”

Liang Xian is the property management director of a commercial complex in Shenzhen Longhua. He told the introductory notes that intelligent robots that had been popular in the Guangzhou-Shenzhen region and were able to dance with the rhythm of music also participated in a large-scale promotion of their complex in the Mid-Autumn Festival.

On the day of the event, as the music rang, the seven robots arranged in a row were following the rhythm, changing the various dances, and sometimes kicking and kicking, and no matter how the rhythm changes, it is hard to beat these “high-tech” dancers. "As long as the robot starts dancing, it always attracts a large number of customers."

Liang Xian said that there are many parents who have children with comments and instructions. What impressed him the most was the words that a parent told the children on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival: "This is the real high-tech. You have to come up with such artificial intelligence in the future, okay?" He couldn't help but sigh.

He said that from the perspective of the audience, these robots are indeed gods, can not dance, and how to switch music dance moves. But he knew in his heart that these were all "manual" credits.

In the event rehearsal, he found that the music sounded these standby robots can make action feedback, but they are all out of sync, the scene is very funny. Subsequently, the robot staff began to adjust the scene, "requires the event organizer to submit the selected tracks first, and the on-site technicians program the robot according to the rhythm of the music and set the robot's movements."

What makes him speechless is that these tracks cannot be replaced once they are selected. The technicians said that if you need to change the dance movements, you will need new programming. It will be very time-consuming and labor-intensive. "If you ask a group of professional dancers, the rehearsal will only take more than an hour. The rehearsal of these robots has tossed four or five. Hours, it is necessary to debug after the mall is over at night."

The curious Mr. Liang had privately asked the technicians who arranged the robot "dance". Why do these artificial intelligence robots need to "manually" choreograph. The other party replied: The robot is currently using the originally developed version, and all application environments are laboratory scenarios, and commercial performance has never been considered before. “Because of the noisy environmental factors in the commercial performance, the sound receiving system cannot make corresponding action feedback.”

It can be said that the robot dance is not fake, but if it is not programmed, it will only make a joke. "This team has only this version of the robot from beginning to end, and it has not been optimized and improved. As long as it can be played, is it true? Artificial intelligence, it doesn't matter."

The other party even revealed to Liang Xian that the robots were set to dance on their own when they first appeared at the technology exhibition. The other commercial performances were almost all “programming dances” to achieve the effect that the merchant wanted. “There was so much white on the scene. Applause, fooling things."

In recent years, those artificial intelligence projects and products that are not easy to use and are not smart enough have been dubbed "artificial mental retardation" by the public, and have been put on the Internet as a laughing stock. However, some “artificial” projects under the name of AI are favored by capital.

Coincidentally, this trend is equally popular in the European entrepreneurial field.

The London-based professional agency, Vectra Group (MMC) and Bank of England Barclays, released the March issue of The State Of AI 2019, revealing a very embarrassing phenomenon: about 2,830 labors in 13 EU countries. After the smart startup research, it was found that 40% of European startups classified as “AI companies” did not use any AI technology.

But start-ups labeled as artificial intelligence can get 15% to 50% more investment than other types of technology companies. It is said that his AI is still artificial, we only need C round success!

Perhaps this is just a scene in which some entrepreneurs and investment institutions "co-play". All the artificial intelligence concepts are only for throwing the balls of the drums, the public and the consumers. Whoever picks up, who is really Handed over "smart"... wrong, IQ tax.