At the end of the Lunar Year celebrations on January 29, iFLYTEK announced two major development plans: the iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030 Plan, a research program to develop robots for family life; and the Wild Goose Queue Plan, to recruit talent from around the world.
The company’s Founder and Chairman Liu Qingfeng, and Executive President Wu Xiaoru delivered speeches at the ceremony, with more than 10,000 employees in attendance online. They jointly reviewed the past year while expressing optimism for a prosperous 2021for the company and its workers.
Over 2021, iFLYTEK worked to meet the rigid demands of society and promote social progress, staying true to its mission of creating a better world through artificial intelligence (AI). Sharing some of the over 1,500 letters from various organizations including the UN, the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, and partners from around the country, Liu said: “We have been increasingly engaged in the development of our country. We have felt a sense of pride, achievement and responsibility within, and we will work further to obtain greater progress.”
iFLYTEK Senior Vice President Zhang Youguo added that: “Over the past year, iFLYTEK as been a leader in artificial intelligence in China and has kept the bigger picture in mind while maintaining a detail orientation, aiming to solve major problems of the time with artificial intelligence.”
iFLYTEK progressed in multiple business areas and achieved systematic innovation, creating value to meet social demands.
At the end of the lunar year 2020 ceremony, iFLYTEK set the goal of “one billion users, one hundred billion yuan in revenues, and one trillion yuan in its industrial ecosystem”. Liu shared with attendees the progress iFLYTEK had made over the past year of 2021.
The Chairman pointed out that the company managed to establish its businesses in spite of the volatile economic environment of 2021, saying that “Our main businesses have enabled us to weather economic fluctuations and will continue to be a source of strength. Let’s change the world for the better with innovations.”
At the ceremony, iFLYTEK proposed four evaluation criteria for its main businesses – sound user dependence, long-term operating capability, sustainable growth potential, and demonstration for industries.
“At the core of our mission is to meet rigid social demands and promote social progress by adding our own value,” Liu said. In 2021, iFLYTEK achieved strong results in areas such as education, healthcare, consumer products, telecoms carrier services, and smart automobile devices.
In the education field, iFLYTEK developed services and products that include English listening and speech testing, a personalized learning manual, and AI learning pads that taught according to students’ aptitudes.
In aiding with the development of smart cities, iFLYTEK has been building and improving “artificial intelligence + data” platforms, setting an example of “data foundation + apps” for the whole country. In 2021 alone, iFLYTEK’s public service app was downloaded 330 million times, with the active users exceeding 10 million per month in the Anhui Province, protecting about 74 million people from infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, iFLYTEK managed to expand its smart city business into three more cities, with the total now standing at 13.
In the consumer products field, iFLYTEK has developed an array of new products including smart translators and recorders that have engaged a wider audience of users. Noting the increased enthusiasm for iFLYTEK’s products and services, Liu announced that a community would be established for the tens of millions of iFLYTEK users so that the company and consumers would be connected as both keep progressing in their pursuits.
In healthcare, iFLYTEK has increasingly applied artificial intelligence solutions to grassroot medical services, as well as pandemic prevention and control. Specifically, the company developed the Diagnosis and Treatment Assistant for the general public and the Smart Medical Assistant for doctors, enabling smart follow-ups and chronic disease management, leading to more efficient and affordable medical treatment.
iFLYTEK has also engaged in the smart vehicle industry and has cooperated with more than 40 automobile producers. In particular, the multi-lingual technologies and products of iFLYTEK have increasingly been incorporated in smart car designs and have earned recognition from automobile companies for its performance and accuracy.
Furthermore, in its cooperation with telecoms carriers, iFLYTEK has developed smart screens that support voice commands, gaining a group of active users of more than 6 million per day.
Fostering critical businesses and promoting systematic innovation are the two key strategies in reaching the company’s goals under the 14th Five-Year (2021-2025) Plan period. “At present, iFLYTEK’s main businesses have gained an advantage in sustainable development brought by ‘rigid demands+ generation gap’. In 2022, our main businesses will have even greater fortunes,” Liu said. On further development, he added that, “We have basically gained the capacity to live through economic fluctuations, and in 2022 we shall be more confident than ever to achieve our 14th Five-Year Plan goals.”
iFLYTEK promotes human-machine collaboration and self-evolution, aiming to solve major social problems with systematic innovation.
Liu noted that technological innovation is an innate characteristic of iFLYTEK. “To use artificial intelligence to solve major social problems, it is necessary to establish complicated intelligent systems that are capable of human-machine cooperation and self-evolution. Only systematic innovation can solve complex major social problems.” The Chairman believes that artificial intelligence is more than just a single tool, with systematic innovation required to ensure that technologies, products, services, management, and other resources are coordinated wholistic progress.
iFLYTEK has worked to consolidate its AI research and development platform and has continuously built-up its underlying capabilities for systematic innovation to achieve sustainable growth. Based on the platform, iFLYTEK quickly achieved breakthroughs in its multilingual technologies and has since developed five major technologies, including speech synthesis, recognition, and translation; covering 60 languages and with research efficiency up 50%.
iFLYTEK has made continuous progress in systematic innovation and has achieved integrated development of software and hardware. In 2021, iFLYTEK won recognition as one of the “Top Ten Enterprise Design Centers” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Additionally, the company earned the iF Design and Red Dot Awards from Germany, the G-Mark Award from Japan, and the IDEA Award from the United States.
“When we truly meet the rigid demands of users and play a unique role, no one can stop us from moving forward,” Liu said. Indeed, as the epidemic rages and slows down globalization, iFLYTEK initiated successful overseas business growth that was supported by its multilingual technological innovations.
“Don’t forget our original mission and continue to lead the future of artificial intelligence,” Liu said. In the next steps for the company, iFLYTEK will continue to make breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and move towards general artificial intelligence. At the same time, the company will provide millions of families artificial intelligence solutions that integrate software and hardware to meet their daily needs.
IFLYTEK launched the “iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030 Plan”, to make robots part of family life.
At the ceremony, Liu announced the launch of the “iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030 Plan”, where artificial intelligence will be developed to understand, improve, and evolve—becoming a valued addition to each family.
To implement the plan, Liu revealed that iFLYTEK has already made preparations in advance. The company has established a robot laboratory with the University of Science and Technology of China to conduct research; undertaken the “Brain Science and Brain-like Research” program jointly with the Beijing Normal University; and has worked with the Beijing Anding Hospital to build an authoritative depression knowledge base.
The “iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030 Plan” is divided into three stages: the first stage from 2022 to 2023 will seek to master bionic robot ontology technology, multi-modal perception, expression technology, and active dialogue technology, in a bid to release bionic pets and a group of professional virtual characters; the second stage from 2023 to 2025 will focus on multi-sensor fusion motion control technology, multi-modal emotion understanding, continuous learning technologies, and in-depth knowledge understanding and application technology to develop exoskeleton robots for adaptive walking and virtual characters that can keep provide company; the third stage from 2025 to 2030 will integrating decision-making and compliant actuation, cross-modal autonomous learning technology with common sense reasoning and associative decision-making technology, aiming to develop companion robots that can understand and learn as well as virtual assistants that can learn autonomously.
In particular, Liu introduced the three key products that will be released in the first phase (2022-2023): the first one, is a collection of professional virtual characters that come from arrange of backgrounds, including customer service clerks, doctors, idols, and teachers. Unlike the virtual characters unveiled at the iFLYTEK 1024 Global Developer Festival in 2021, the virtual characters not only support interactions, but also provide people with assistance in the virtual world.
Additionally, bionic pets supported by active dialogue, scene perception, and understanding technologies are to be developed that will be able to learn and improve themselves. This evolutionary ability will allow these bionic pets to provide better company for children company and aid their development.
The third product is an adolescent depression screening platform that will open be available for free to the whole country. It will help children and adolescents maintain and improve mental health by utilizing AI capabilities.
“In the next decade, every family will be able to have a robot to help them with problems that stem from an aging society and declining birth rates,” Liu said. The Chairman hopes that when robots can become part of each family, that the assistance provided by artificial intelligence will be universally known and that its future will be without question.
iFLYTEK launched the Wild Goose Queue Plan, to recruit talents from around the world.
Artificial intelligence will be an important engine for social progress and economic prosperity during the next decade, just like the leader of a wild goose queue. “Only those that are able to solve major social problems will lead in technological innovations and promote prosperity in the industry ecosystem,” Liu said. Aiming to become a leader in the “goose queue” of artificial intelligence, iFLYTEK launched the “Wild Goose Queue Plan” to facilitate the “iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030 Plan”.
The “Wild Goose Queue Plan” seeks to recruit high-caliber talents from around the world so that iFLYTEK will may bolster its cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies. The plan seeks to attract 10 top talents from around the world, 100 leading talents from the field of artificial intelligence, and 1,000 key employees.
In his keynote speech titled “Focus on Value Creation; Sail towards Our Dream”, Wu Xiaoru talked about the main goals in 2022. He noted that iFLYTEK would focus on high-quality and rapid growth in business revenue, a significant increase in the proportion of main businesses, and important breakthroughs in systemic innovation.
Facing a critical juncture, Wu said that iFLYTEK would stick to value creation and seek to be a pioneer in the age of intelligence. “The more uncertainties we face, the more we should focus on systematic innovation and deliver value to our customers.”
iFLYTEK will maintain an unswerving commitment to its original mission and to continuous invigorate its practices and talent pool. The company will always stick to the path of creating a better world with artificial intelligence while committing to the goal of value creation.
Looking into the future, iFLYTEK aspires to become a company that leaves its mark on the history of artificial intelligence and to usher in the next phase of innovation in the industry. The company will work to solve major social problems by virtue of its own development and to use the generated successes as models for the future.
