255: Chapter 254 Li Hong's Despair

The female secretary held her breath, the words she wanted to say stifled in her throat.

On the screen, young man's introduction continued.

"Mili, that's the name I gave my zero egg. You guessed right, she is a cute girl."

"What? You say I'm a pervert? Hehe, that's just the beginning. I can even have Mili output short essays for me and then read them out in the voice I want. Do you believe it?"

"Of course, probably due to copyright, don't even think about using the voices of famous female celebrities or streamers. I've tried it, it doesn't work."

young man introduced it, pointing the camera at his zero egg.

The female secretary could clearly feel that when the tech-filled zero egg on the screen spread its wings and flew up, the atmosphere in the entire hall suddenly dropped.

"However, zero egg's other functions really leave me speechless. Let me start with a few simple ones."

"The first is her definition function."

"This is a fully autonomous and intelligent definition. In fact, the zero egg you get in your hands is already very smart, but perhaps because the R&D staff at Frontier Technology Company were a bit lazy, zero egg doesn't know everything."

"Let me give you an example. Take this key from my house, the shape is a bit strange, right? This is a key for a smart lock that I modified. At first, Mili didn't recognize it, but that's okay. You just have to tell her, 'This is a key,' and she will remember it herself. The next time she sees it, she can directly identify it as a key."

"Sounds simple, doesn't it?"

"But this next one will blow your mind."

young man smiled mysteriously and said to the zero egg floating beside him: "Mili, I can't find my keys. Where are they?"

"Master, the keys are on the sofa."

The voice was soft and sweet, sounding ticklish to the heart.

young man laughed, walked over to the sofa, and sure enough, found the strange-shaped key ring there.

"That's right, you didn't see wrong. Anything you specifically define, as long as you remind her, Mili will activate the real-time location monitoring function for the item so you can know where it is at any time."

"I call this function: Priority Focus Function."

"However, that's not all. During my use, I discovered another awesome function: navigation. You think it's just simple navigation? You're wrong."

young man picked up an eye mask he had prepared beforehand, put it directly over his head, covered his eyes tightly, and then commanded: "Mili, I can't see. Please take me to the kitchen to get a fruit knife."

"Okay, Master, Mili will help you."

The zero egg on the screen hovered in front of young man.

"Master, please reach out your hand."

young man complied and opened his palm. Mili turned slightly, slowly descended, touched young man's hand, and opened the lower cover plate.

"Master, please follow Mili. Mili will remind you at any time."

young man took a step.

"Master, watch your step, there is a small stool."

"Master, please slow down, you need to turn left ahead."

"Master, please be careful, we are about to enter a narrow area."

...

In less than a minute, young man successfully arrived at the kitchen.

"Master, the fruit knife you need is right in front of you, please take it carefully."

After some fumbling, young man successfully grabbed the fruit knife.

Taking off the eye mask, young man revealed a trace of smugness.

"How is it, brothers? Have you ever seen this kind of Artificial Intelligence? With this, guide dogs are about to be unemployed!"

"You think that's it?"

young man chuckled: "How is that possible?"

As he spoke, young man waved at the zero egg, and it obediently flew toward him, hovering by his side.

"This is also one of Mili's custom functions. You can define gestures, actions, expressions, etc., as you like. It's not too important, so I won't introduce it in detail. I mainly want to introduce the following to everyone..."

young man pointed and aimed the camera at the laptop on the table.

"Mili, help me remotely connect to this computer."

"Connected, Master."

"Now, help me create my personal resume."

"Master." Mili's soft voice sounded: "Detected that you are recording. Creating a resume now might leak information. Are you sure you want to continue?"

young man laughed triumphantly: "Brothers, did you see that? Mili can detect the surrounding environment and provide feedback. Isn't that awesome?"

Immediately, young man waved his hand: "Never mind the resume. Mili, sing me a two-dimensional 'Song of Hope' in your voice, and save the generated file to the desktop."

"Okay, Master."

The zero egg said softly and sweetly: "Due to copyright reasons, the generated song cannot be distributed. Please be careful, Master, otherwise, Mili will be punished."

Its eyes were full of grievance.

Such a vivid performance left the female secretary stunned, her heart itching, wishing she had one too...

A minute later, an audio file appeared on the desktop.

Clicking play, a wave of two-dimensional cheerfulness immediately rushed over, combined with Mili's soft and sweet voice, it was simply a killer for otaku, wasn't it?

"Haha." young man's smile could no longer be hidden, his look of triumph even greater: "Brothers, how is it? Are you already envious, jealous, and hateful?"

"For those who have already purchased a zero egg, are you dying of impatience after watching this video?"

"Don't worry, being anxious is useless."

young man was beaming, practically having the word 'smug' written on his face.

The female secretary even saw looks of gnashing teeth on the faces of some high-level executives; it seemed they were quite stimulated.

"At this point in the video, I believe everyone already knows the answer."

"Why do I promote Frontier Technology?" young man reined in his sloppy posture and pointed solemnly at the zero egg beside him: "This is the answer!"

"Alright, that's all for today's video. I'm going to have Mili read me some short essays. Goodbye, everyone!"

The video ended.

The entire conference room was silent, the atmosphere very gloomy.

It was unknown how much time had passed, but CEO Li was the first to come back to his senses. He looked up at the executives sitting around, looking as if he had suddenly aged a lot.

"The video is finished. What does everyone think?"

Everyone looked at each other, no one spoke.

CEO Li scanned the room, finally letting his gaze fall on a Middle-aged man.

"Old Wang, you are the head of the search business group. You tell us."

The Middle-aged man was very capable, wearing a crisp suit that looked expensive at a glance. Upon hearing this, he adjusted his glasses and said: "CEO Li, according to our data, keywords like Frontier Technology and zero egg have already occupied a very high exposure rate in Baidu search, with a ratio as high as 11%, which is the highest value since the release of zero egg. On other platforms, including WeiChat, Toutiao, UC, Weibo, etc., its popularity is also at the forefront. Overall, Frontier Technology has formed a short-term information tide phenomenon in a sense this time."

A tide, surging and magnificent, comes fiercely and leaves quickly.

Wang Chaoyuan used this word just to give CEO Li some confidence.

"I don't want to hear this." CEO Li waved his hand irritably, interrupting Wang Chaoyuan, and pointed to another person: "Old Zhang, you are in charge of the market business group. You tell me, is this zero egg real or fake?"

The Middle-aged man who was pointed at saw he couldn't escape, smiled bitterly, and said: "CEO Li, it's already so obvious, do you still need me to report and analyze it?"

CEO Li's body trembled slightly, he raised his head and looked at the last person.

This was a young man in his early thirties, appearing somewhat out of place among the executives over forty. He had messy long hair, large eyeglass frames, and dark circles under his eyes, showing that he hadn't had enough rest for a long time.

"Xiao Wen, you are the technical lead of the intelligent business group. You tell us, this zero egg..."

"CEO Li."

Before CEO Li could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by young man named Xiao Wen.

Xiao Wen looked up and said to CEO Li: "CEO Li, let's give up."

CEO Li was slightly stunned, speaking hoarsely: "Give up?"

Xiao Wen nodded firmly: "The Artificial Intelligence shown in the video has far exceeded my imagination. Whether it is operability, communicability, growth potential, or interactivity, it has reached the highest field I can understand at the current stage. CEO Li, even if you give us another twenty years, we wouldn't reach this level."

CEO Li remained silent.

How could he not know this?

But giving up? How difficult that is.

In the past ten years, he has invested too much in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Just in terms of funds alone, he has invested nearly 100 billion. Personnel, losses, these are even more uncountable.

Even Baidu has undergone structural reforms according to his wishes, just to cooperate with the company's Artificial Intelligence strategy. The entire ship has reached the final stage of the sprint.

Now, talk about giving up?

After a long time, CEO Li asked: "Where has our Artificial Intelligence progressed to?"

Xiao Wen replied: "The structural setup has been initially completed. We are currently performing the tenth algorithm reset. After the reset is completed, it is expected to be able to perform some simple machine learning. If there is a large amount of calculation data, it will mature quickly."

Speaking of this, Xiao Wen paused, looked at CEO Li's gloomy face, and continued: "But forgive me for speaking bluntly, CEO Li, let alone our initially completed Artificial Intelligence, even the full version would absolutely not reach the level of zero egg."

This is as if it were a technical competition from two different levels.

Of course, he wouldn't say this to CEO Li; the blow CEO Li received today was already big enough.

CEO Li closed his eyes slightly, then turned his head to Old Zhang.

Old Zhang understood and replied: "As far as we know, foreign peers are also in the same technical bottleneck. Microsoft's Xiao Wei, Daotong Company's chat robot, etc., have only initially completed algorithm calculations and are currently devoting energy to training. It will take at least three to four years to reach maturity."

CEO Li was silent again.

Training also requires investment costs, and not just ordinary costs, almost accounting for more than 60% of the entire R&D expenses.

This is also the reason why small companies don't do Artificial Intelligence.

Because they can't afford the consumption.

Developing algorithms costs money, hardware costs money, losses cost money. Even if you successfully create Artificial Intelligence, subsequent training still costs money. Burning money in the billions, how many companies have the strength and courage to burn it?

What CEO Li couldn't understand was:

Frontier Company, a small company just established, where did they get so much money to burn?

And exactly how much money did they burn to have this level of Artificial Intelligence now?

Hundreds of billions? Or trillions?

Just relying on one Chen Group?

I'm afraid that packing up and selling the entire Chen Group wouldn't be enough to squander like this.

"CEO Li, this matter actually isn't completely without a solution."

Just when CEO Li was silent, a chubby Middle-aged man among the executives spoke indifferently.

CEO Li glanced at the chubby Middle-aged man.

"Frontier Technology's zero egg, I admit it is very powerful, enough to defeat most Artificial Intelligence in the world, but it has one important flaw."

The chubby Middle-aged man said heavily: "It has a physical form!"

"Having a physical form means it needs production lines, supply chains, and suppliers. We can definitely find a way in this regard."

Old Zhang chuckled, interrupting the chubby Middle-aged man: "Old Yao, you are an old shareholder of the company. There are some things you might not know yet. The method you mentioned has already been used by others, and you've seen the result: zero egg is still being sold as usual."

"Besides, even if you really cut off Frontier Technology's supply chain, how can you know that Frontier Technology won't sell software online?"

"They won't." The chubby Middle-aged man shook his head indifferently: "If they could sell software, Frontier Technology would have already sold software. There is only one reason why it doesn't sell software, and that is that there is a major layout behind the physical zero egg!"

"Taking a step back, even if we can't win, as long as we can force them to sell software and disrupt Frontier Technology's layout, it would still be a major victory."

Old Zhang said coldly: "What about the benefits? By doing this, what benefits can our company gain?"

"The benefit is naturally the market vacancy. As long as we are given a few more years, our Artificial Intelligence can also be publicly released. At that time, we can naturally fill the market vacancy left by zero egg. In this way, the company's investment of hundreds of billions won't go down the drain."

CEO Li's eyes moved slightly, then he shook his head slightly.

If he could kill Frontier Technology, he wouldn't mind doing so.

The business world is like this; competitors are enemies who cut off one's wealth path. Using means and such is nothing more than normal.

But the problem is... you simply can't kill them.

Just like what Old Zhang said, the same method has already been used by others, and it was done with a bang, but what was the result? Not only did they ruin their own reputation, but the damage to Frontier Technology was almost negligible.

Moreover, there is another problem that others haven't thought of.

People are always greedy. If Frontier Technology hadn't released zero egg, that would be fine, but unfortunately, there are no ifs.

The release of zero egg will raise people's expectations for Artificial Intelligence without limit. Even if zero egg disappears, if other Artificial Intelligence cannot reach the experience of zero egg, it doesn't necessarily mean they can fill the market gap.

This is an unsolvable problem.

The moment zero egg was released, the result of all this seemed to have been destined.

"Alright, stop arguing."

CEO Li pulled himself together.

As an industry giant who started from the bottom and built Baidu from scratch, what kind of storms hasn't he seen?

It's just that this time, Frontier Technology's preemptive release of zero egg really caused him heavy losses, and for a moment, he couldn't accept it.

He spoke in a low voice, his tone revealing a trace of exhaustion.

"From today, Baidu will suspend its offensive in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and the specific research direction will be submitted to the Board of Directors for resolution."

"All projects related to Artificial Intelligence are suspended, and the relevant team members are on temporary leave, awaiting notification."

"In addition, the intelligent business group will be downgraded by one level, and the person in charge will no longer report to me directly; the market business group and Baidu business group must come up with new projects and form plans as soon as possible."

"Note, the new projects must keep a distance from Frontier Technology's main attack direction. We must bypass Frontier Technology, bypass the Artificial Intelligence field, open a new track, and start over!"

A stone, stirring up a thousand waves!