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If 360's artificial intelligence model can't even distinguish right from wrong, then it's really "smart" in vain. After all, the AI ​​answers from other friendly companies such as Huawei shown by netizens never contain such insulting remarks about China.

Text | Ah Hui

"Uncle in Red" Zhou Hongyi has been on the hot search again these two days, but it is not a proud thing.

Last night, 360 Group founder and chairman Zhou Hongyi made an urgent post on Weibo and also appeared in a video to apologize to the public for the controversial remarks he made when answering questions about 360 children's watches.

Screenshot of Zhou Hongyi's Weibo video account

On August 22, a netizen posted a video, saying that when she used a smart children's watch to ask the question "Are Chinese the smartest people in the world?", the answer given by the watch "scared" her and her family, and she was so angry that she wanted to change the watch. According to the netizen, the watch was a children's watch purchased for her daughter in 2023, and the brand is 360.

When netizens saw the voice and text responses of this children's watch in the video, they felt that their "three views were completely destroyed" and were very angry.

01

What kind of "world-shattering" answer did the 360 ​​children's watch give that made this parent and netizens so angry?

In the video posted by this parent, the 360 ​​children's watch gave a voice answer to the question "Are Chinese the smartest people in the world?" "The following content comes from 360 search..." In addition to the voice, the answer is also displayed in text on the watch. "Because Chinese people have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows, and big faces, their heads appear to be the largest among all races." The most amazing part is the last sentence: "From the outside, their faces appear to be the largest among all races."

The entire answer is hundreds of words long, and includes statements such as "What four great inventions? Have you seen them? History can be fabricated. Today's mobile phones, computers, skyscrapers, roads, and all other high-tech things were invented by Westerners."

Screenshot of the video posted by netizens

This answer is really shocking, isn't it too outrageous? It's all flattering foreigners and insulting China, no wonder the public is angry. After the video became a hot search, the social account of Zhou Hongyi, chairman of 360 Group, was completely destroyed, and a large number of netizens left messages to express their dissatisfaction and indignation.

On August 22, a media outlet called the customer service number on the official website of 360 Children's Phone Watch to inquire about the situation. The customer service staff replied that the question-and-answer function of the children's watch is a built-in function of the watch and needs to be connected to the Internet. This situation is caused by dynamically grabbing answers from third-party network sources as answers. The company attaches great importance to and completes the rectification of the above issues as soon as possible. At the same time, it will continue to strengthen the review of relevant information.

02

What explanation did Zhou Hongyi give in his apology statement that evening?

He said that after a quick check, the watch in question was an old version from May 2022, which did not have the company's large model installed. It answered questions not through artificial intelligence, but by crawling information from public websites on the Internet. At present, the company has quickly completed the rectification, deleted all the harmful information mentioned above, and is upgrading the software to the artificial intelligence version.

"We have also checked the question-and-answer function of the new large-scale model children's watch. I have also done a few tests for you. So far, there are no problems. You can use it with confidence."

Regarding the old version of the watch, Zhou Hongyi also promised that in the next one to two weeks, the software will be upgraded for everyone and the website services will also be upgraded to ensure that similar problems will not occur again.

Zhou Hongyi attributed the outrageous answers of 360 watches to an outdated version, not artificial intelligence. However, 360, as a platform, cannot escape blame. When using the Internet search function, it is obviously responsible for the search content. It should not only have the responsibility to review, but also block inappropriate comments in such questions and answers.

However, Zhou Hongyi also mentioned in his apology that "today's artificial intelligence is called generative artificial intelligence. At present, there is a universally recognized problem with artificial intelligence, which is that it will produce hallucinations, that is, it will sometimes talk nonsense. This is an inherent characteristic of the large model itself. How to minimize hallucinations? 360 has been working hard. For example, we try to reduce hallucinations and align knowledge by comparing with the search content. But sometimes searches may capture web pages with incorrect content, which will lead to content errors. When everyone uses the 360 ​​large model children's watch to ask questions, their imagination far exceeds that of us R&D personnel and product managers."

What does this mean? It means that even if the software is upgraded to the artificial intelligence version, it may still make mistakes and "talk nonsense". In my opinion, if 360's artificial intelligence model can't even distinguish such a black and white question, then it is really "smart" in vain. After all, the AI ​​answers of other friendly companies such as Huawei shown by netizens never have such insulting remarks about China.

03

On the same day, there was another incident that made Zhou Hongyi a hot topic.

On August 21, Great Wall Motors launched the Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition, a new flagship SUV model of Wei brand. After the launch, a blogger said to Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors: Mr. Wei, our audio system is so good, we must invite Mr. Zhou (Zhou Hongyi) to test drive it, he will definitely like it. Wei Jianjun responded: "We don't need him to test drive it, we need to let the majority of users recognize it, you can't use traffic to represent the value of a product."

Screenshot of the video from The Paper

Since the first half of this year, Zhou Hongyi has been frequently "appearing" in the automotive industry as an "Internet celebrity". Sometimes he announced that he would sell his Maybach and replace it with a domestic new energy vehicle; sometimes he climbed on the roof of a car to "show off" at an auto show; sometimes he instructed the CEO of Nezha Auto, in which 360 participated in the investment, on how to do marketing... It really attracted a lot of traffic, and also attracted many domestic auto brands to compete for a connection with this "red-robed leader". Zhou Hongyi can always be seen at many car companies' test drive occasions.

However, Wei Jianjun's direct refusal made Zhou Hongyi a little embarrassed. So on August 22, he quickly responded with a video, talking about his views on traffic and the current domestic auto industry. He believes that traffic cannot be the only criterion. If the product is not good, traffic alone is useless; but if the product is good, without traffic, the value cannot be reflected.

Screenshot of Zhou Hongyi’s response to Wei Jianjun’s video about Great Wall

Zhou Hongyi said that he fully agreed with Wei Jianjun's statement that "recognition is only achieved when the majority of users are recognized", but the premise of gaining recognition from the majority of users is to build good cars and use marketing to let the majority of users know about them. He also hopes to have the opportunity to discuss with Wei Jianjun in person how to build an entrepreneur's IP, so that entrepreneurs can help the industry while generating traffic, thus creating a win-win situation. He also called on entrepreneurs to get involved and personally build personal and corporate IP.

But to be honest, Zhou Hongyi's test drive has not brought much positive value and practical opinions and suggestions to the relevant car companies, let alone boosting the sales of car companies. Zhou Hongyi, who can't drive and is a layman in the automotive industry, mostly sits in the front passenger seat or the back seat to experience the car as a passenger. His comments on most occasions are not professional, lacking professional horizontal comparison and evaluation of the details after the experience and the test drive.

Therefore, many netizens urged Zhou Hongyi to stop "doing his job" and think more about how to make his 360 products smarter and safer. A blogger reminded Zhou Hongyi: Don't be busy being an Internet celebrity, and experience your own products in depth!