Reinventing the Millennium

Yike had two acquisition negotiations with Siri very early on, but the latter refused on the grounds that there would be more technological breakthroughs and higher company value.

According to Yike's contacts, it was not only rejected by itself, but also by Apple.

The progress of the third acquisition negotiation initiated this time stems from Siri's independent attempt. It has launched apps in both Apple and Android stores, which has indeed attracted the interest of some users, but the response has not been as expected.

What really made Siri's executives determined were the details of the acquisition negotiations.

Company CEO Dai Ge asked Schroeder, Vice President of Yike America, in the conference room: "Are you trying to hinder Apple or are you really interested in promoting this technology?"

This is a very important question.

Schroeder was extremely emotional and shouted loudly: "$320 million is the final offer."

Dai Ge was very moved and agreed to the acquisition.

Words are not as good as actions. If you are not really optimistic about the future of technology and want to promote its application, how can you be so sincere?

In fact, SIri has been considering the huge Android camp from the beginning, but after entering the Apple Store, it became interested in Apple again. In the process of swaying between the two sides and raising prices, it heard that Amazon and Google were incubating similar projects. It is also difficult to establish a better business value cycle through free applications. We can only decide to see who is more sincere.

Compared to Apple’s US$260 million, US$320 million is already a satisfactory figure, and it may be difficult to squeeze out more sincerity.

Once the most critical conditions were finalized, the acquisition progress became very fast.

After Daige considered carefully and became a member of Yike, he followed Schroeder to visit Yike's Silicon Valley R\u0026D center and saw Yike's actions in related fields.

Half a morning later, Dai Ge couldn't help but joke: "Yike is indeed a company founded by Chinese people. I saw a lot of Chinese faces."

"But they are all very good." Schroeder replied calmly, "Many of the Chinese people you just saw were recruited from the NEC laboratory. Xu wrote the first convolution in the Silicon Valley laboratory. Neural network, he was one of the first people in the world to use neural network methods to study natural language processing."

He continued: "Yu is doing research on sparse coding. Zhu has made great progress in machine vision. NEC wants to industrialize it, but it is difficult to do it now. These Chinese people may be, oh no, It should be said that he is the best researcher in the relevant field."

Xu is Xu Wei, Yu is Yu Kai, and Zhu is Zhu Shenghuo.

Schroeder shrugged: "These Chinese people in Silicon Valley are very powerful. If Yike Company hadn't come from China, it might be difficult for us to recruit them."

Dai Ge nodded and said with a smile: "Indeed, many Chinese here in Silicon Valley have strong technical capabilities."

He took two steps, shook hands with a Chinese face after being introduced by Schroeder, and then continued walking forward before saying: "I am already excited now that I know they are my future colleagues, but there is still A very important question.”

Schroeder stopped and listened carefully.

"I strongly recommend that they all wear work badges, otherwise I won't be able to distinguish their faces," Daige said.

Schroeder smiled. He had felt the same way in the past.

He joked: "Dai Ge, as long as you can recognize what our boss looks like."

When it comes to technology, Siri's original CTO Tom Gruber had more contact with Xu Wei and the others, while Daige was responsible for more of the management of the entire project.

"When can I see Mr. Fang?" Dai Ge asked.

"Soon, he will fly back from Washington this week." Schroeder is a member of Yike's board of directors and is very aware of the boss's schedule. He continued, "But before meeting him, you need to prepare Siri's work. Google How about there being a chat salon where Siri can make an appearance?"

Dai Ge was shocked. He was about to make his debut so soon. The contract had already been signed and the money could not be refunded.

He considered it and said: "Then I hope Mr. Fang can get familiar with Siri as soon as possible."

"Don't worry, everyone is always tolerant of new things." Schroeder said with a smile.

Daige still has some emotional fluctuations. After all, the private equity firm in which he had invested some money was once in despair because of Mr. Fang, whose style is still very famous.

Four days later, he met Mr. Fang who returned from Washington.

When Dai Ge walked into the office and saw Mr. Fang chatting with another familiar Chinese face, he immediately began to think about why he felt this way.

"Hi, Dai Ge, this is Professor Zhang Shousheng." Fang Zhuo introduced the two of them, "I wonder if you know him."

Daige said "Ah" and remembered that this was a Chinese professor he had met at Stanford. He smiled and said: "I know Professor Zhang. I once chatted with Tom at Stanford. Of course, it was mainly Tom who was chatting. Professor Zhang must have Don’t remember me.”

Zhang Shousheng really didn't remember the foreigner in front of him, so he could only shake hands and smile politely.

Fang Zhuo briefly introduced the Siri project, which was originally a technical research project born out of Stanford, like CTO Tom Gruber, who has been working as a researcher at Stanford's Knowledge Systems Laboratory.

Zhang Shousheng was not very interested in this aspect, so he left after briefly chatting for a few words.

Fang Zhuo saw the physics professor off, made an appointment to invite his students to join Yike, and then returned to the office.

"Dai Ge, I'm glad that we can sit in the same office to discuss the future of Siri." Fang Zhuo smiled and shook hands with Dai Ge again.

Daige shook hands with the mysterious man very politely and respectfully.

For him, in addition to this, perhaps he should also be given the title of gravedigger, because Daigle used to work at Motorola, and his current old employer has been acquired by Google, and Yikewu, which vigorously promotes Android and promotes the development of smartphones, It's like digging the grave of traditional mobile phone manufacturers.

"Mr. Fang, there's something I want to say in advance. Do you think Siri should be renamed?" Dai Ge asked.

Fang Zhuo asked strangely: "Why?"

"When my wife was pregnant, we thought it was a daughter and named her Siri. But then we welcomed a son, and I used this name for the company." Dai Ge explained.

Fang Zhuo really didn't know there was such a connection. He smiled and said: "This name is as interesting as Siri. No problem. I think there is no problem with this name. Yi Ke raised Siri like a daughter and can transform her from a A small AI assistant is trained to become a large AI assistant.”

Dai Ge is very happy, he hopes to keep this name.

He continued: "Mr. Fang, there is something else I want to say in advance."

Fang Zhuo stretched out his hand to signal.

"The negotiation between Siri and Yike took a long time, and there were changes in price, but this is what it should be." Dai Ge said seriously.

Fang Zhuo nodded slightly, thinking he was talking about the future value of Siri.

Unexpectedly, Dai Ge explained his reasons: "The private equity I invested in before went bankrupt. It shorted Yike, and my money was gone! But this time I made it back on my own!"

Fang Zhuo didn't expect it to be such a real...joke.

He laughed loudly: "Daige, I won the last round, you won this round, and we have reconciled. In the future, we can work together to promote Siri's prospects and win again."

Dai Ge took the initiative to shake hands and felt that the mysterious man was different from what he imagined.

Fang Zhuo took a sip of tea and talked about the complementarity of Yike's internal technology and Siri.

This complementarity comes from Siri's workflow, which obtains the user's voice information, transmits it to the server in the data center, and then transcribes the voice information into text information.

Then you need to figure out the meaning of these text messages. This process is natural language processing (NLP), which requires machines to have sophisticated and flexible algorithms to understand human expressions of multiple meanings.

The artificial intelligence team currently built by Yike R\u0026D Center focuses on the deep learning framework of NLP, which is the area that Fang Zhuo and Schmidt discussed briefly at Steve Jobs's house.

Dai Ge has witnessed Yike's team on the spot in the past few days, and he is indeed more surprised than sincerity. This group of technical experts from NEC is very consistent with Siri's research.

"It may take a while to realize this, but I think it's still worth looking forward to." Fang Zhuo finished the tea in his cup and expressed his attitude, "You can stick to it."

Daige nodded first, then hesitated for a while and asked, "Mr. Fang, I want to know if Yike has any plans to open Siri to third parties?"

"Open to third parties? Hmm..." Fang Zhuo did not hide his surprise. He really did not consider this direction. He just followed the habitual path of weakening his opponents and strengthening himself. Siri was previously exclusive to Apple.

"If Siri can be installed on Yiko mobile phones, it will definitely improve. And if it can be installed on more and more mobile phones, maybe we can see it truly becoming an artificial intelligence assistant." Dai Ge sounded excited. said, "Mr. Fang, think about it, it's not us pushing Siri to users, but thousands of users helping us train Siri."

Who serves whom?

This is an unimagined path and perspective.

Fang Zhuo thought for a moment and smiled: "So, I really haven't thought about it in terms of specialization in the art industry. Well, this can be included in the company's discussion, but the first thing is to apply it to Yike products. If it can get If users love it, we can continue to push it out. Oh yes, I’m pretty sure we will have competitors. At the very least, Google will definitely make something similar.”

Dai Ge did not expect that the mysterious man would give out the tendency so easily.

At this moment, he really put down his sincerity of green dollar bills and was excited about the prospects that Siri could realize. It is not difficult to make a voice assistant and integrate it into a mobile phone. What is really difficult is the continuous skill research and data training behind it.

This is also the reason why Siri originally considered the Android camp. Android has more user groups.

"Let it face everyone with me first, and then we will push it out before Christmas." Fang Zhuo gave a time plan.

Daige nodded. Schroeder had already communicated this to himself.

He talked a few more about the benefits of Siri being open, and then asked: "Mr. Fang, I saw you said on Twitter that you met Steve Jobs. How is he now?"

"Well, Schmidt and I went to visit him." Fang Zhuo replied, "The situation may not be very optimistic."

Dai Ge said with some regret: "He called me last year. Siri is what it is today. I wanted to thank him in person, but now...it doesn't seem to be very appropriate."

The company was sold to Yike, and then he contacted Jobs. It seemed that instead of sincerely thanking him, he was angry with him.

But Daige’s heart is very sincere: “He was the one who talked to me about Siri’s voice mode, which is indeed more convenient and smarter than text.”

The earliest Siri was for text input. Daigle discussed the software model with Jobs last year and felt that voice was indeed more appropriate.

"At this time, it seems that I can't thank him on your behalf." Fang Zhuo felt embarrassed after hearing this. If he sent a message, it would be more like showing off.

Dai Ge nodded regretfully.

However, just when he was about to walk out of the office after chatting for a while, Fang Zhuo called out to him.

"He probably got the news, and I can convey it to you." Fang Zhuo shook his phone, "He sent me a message, 'You are such a bastard.'"

Apart from competing with Apple for Siri, Fang Zhuo can't think of any reason why Jobs would send him such a message in the near future.

He thought for a while, first relayed Daigle's thanks, and then sent a message - no need to think about it, leave the question to Cook, let's see what Cook will do.

Jobs finally wrote back - great, I became more and more aware of the challenge he faced.

Fangzhuo demonstrated the exchange of information for Daigle and said with a smile: "Thanks Steve for beating Cook up."

Dai Ge left with satisfaction and prepared for the launch of Siri on a larger stage.

The week was extremely fulfilling. When Daige sat in the YouTube live broadcast room, he was still a little uncomfortable with this mode, but he quickly remembered that his boss had played this before.

Some guests have already arrived full of hatred, some are still on the way, and some have rejected Google's invitation.

The live broadcast has been started. This time it is a salon program hosted by YouTube, IDC and Twitter. It discusses business operations and the success and failure of CEOs. Of course, some viewers see this as the head of Yike’s response to his absence from the press conference in the past two years. Will make up for it.

Fang Zhuo ignored the gazes of several guests on him, stood in front of the camera, showed his mobile phone, and said with a smile: "I'll show you something interesting."

He shouted to the latest Mars: "Siri, Siri, who is the best CEO in the world?"

This is how Siri wakes up after being changed.

Siri on the phone was awakened quickly, and a soft voice came out: "Are you looking for Fang Zhuo?"

Fang Zhuo grinned and said to the camera: "Look at our new intelligent voice assistant Siri. It has completed an extremely fair judgment. Isn't it interesting?"

There were spectators at the scene who also noticed this scene and immediately shouted: "Mr. Fang, is this a smart voice assistant? Ask it who is the worst CEO in the world! It would be interesting if it could answer!"

When Fang Zhuo heard such a question, he held his mobile phone and looked maliciously at the guests who suddenly became nervous, and asked decisively as if reciting a mantra:

"Siri, Siri, who is the worst CEO in the world?"