Professor Kong Zhemin considered carefully before asking, “Can this be understood as a type of popular science educational material aimed at ordinary people?”

Yu Ping’an nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“We’re using the internet to make this content accessible to more people, while providing more efficient search methods.”

“At the same time, we’re striving to ensure that the content compilation is neither too profound or professional for ordinary people to understand, nor too empty or vulgar to be nutritious.”

“That’s why I’ve come to visit you, hoping you’ll join us.”

“You’re not only an industry expert, but also a professor beloved by students, with rich experience in textbook compilation. Having you oversee this content would guarantee success.”

Professor Kong Zhemin’s face showed a hint of surprise.

“It sounds like a great endeavor that will benefit generations to come.”

“But this seems to be an extremely massive project.”

“Just the various courses in Chinese literature alone, such as ancient literature, modern literature, foreign literature, and so on, have a large number of specialized works. Even after organizing and simplifying them into an encyclopedia, the content would still be unimaginably vast.”

“Moreover, the expandable content in the Q&A section is unlimited. This isn’t something that can be completed in just ten or eight years.”

“I still need to supervise graduate students, and I’m afraid I don’t have that much time.”

“If many people are working together on this project, will they be paid? How will costs be covered… Have you considered these issues, Manager Yu?”

Yu Ping’an was well prepared and quickly explained, “Don’t worry, Professor Kong, we’ve already considered all these issues.”

“This project was approved by Mr. Pei of Tenda Group, who can mobilize all resources of the entire group company to ensure its success.”

“I also asked Mr. Pei about the workload issue, and his answer was: The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the second best time is now. Precisely because this is such a massive project, we can’t delay. If we keep postponing, nothing will ever get done.”

“Even if the content is incomplete in the initial stages, as long as the information is useful, it will attract users.”

“Regarding manpower, you needn’t worry. You would be the chief responsible person for this professional field, only handling coordination and the highest level of supervision. We will also invite young scholars, professors, and outstanding graduate students to participate in these projects, each responsible for different tasks.”

“We will fully protect the intellectual property rights of creators, while building a legal team to combat plagiarism and copyright infringement, defending the rights of creators.”

“Creators will receive corresponding remuneration each month based on their star rating and workload.”

“As for the distribution method of remuneration, all members of the ‘Useful APP’ need to pay to browse the content, with charges based on usage time and views. From this income, we take ten percent as operating costs, and the remaining ninety percent is returned to creators according to proportion.”

“Of course, considering there won’t be enough paying members in the early stages, we’ll provide a minimum remuneration for all creators. As long as the monthly approved content exceeds ten thousand words, they can receive a subsidy of two thousand yuan.”

Professor Kong Zhemin was startled: “This subsidy doesn’t vary with word count?”

Yu Ping’an nodded: “That’s right.”

“Since this is refined knowledge, if payment were tied to word count, there might be slight issues with padding content.”

“This subsidy is just a basic living guarantee, ensuring creators don’t work for nothing in the early stages.”

“Of course, this isn’t encouraging a ‘big pot’ mentality or idleness.”

“Once ‘Useful APP’ has enough members, income will increase. We’ll determine each department’s and creator’s earnings weight using a relatively complex algorithm, including: creator star rating, views of written or modified content, first creation of new entries, number and proportion of content likes, etc., to calculate the income share for each section and creator.”

“This portion of income is what carries the incentive nature.”

Professor Kong Zhemin nodded slightly: “That’s quite reasonable.”

Domestic professors should be among the groups with the highest income variance, but more than ninety percent of professors have no significant additional income beyond their salary and basic performance bonuses.

At Handong University, lecturers earned less than 100,000 yuan in annual salary, while associate professors earned less than 130,000 yuan.

Especially professors in liberal arts disciplines who focused on scholarship were quite poor.

The 2,000 yuan subsidy, though not much, was still quite attractive since it only required producing 10,000 words for the Useful APP each month. After all, this wasn’t as difficult as writing academic papers; it mainly involved organizing existing knowledge.

Moreover, content would only be considered valid after passing review, preventing unlimited padding and avoiding the phenomenon of “paying for garbage.”

Professor Kong Zhemin considered carefully: “Manager Yu, I trust Tenda Group, and the conditions are very sincere.”

“Besides, this is a good deed that will benefit generations to come. I’ve been in education all my life, and I would be happy to do some popular science work within my capabilities on the internet.”

“However, I want to ask…”

“Your company probably won’t make much money from this project, right? Is this some kind of public welfare project, or a new business model?”

Professor Kong’s eyes showed confusion.

Indeed, the conditions were quite good all around.

But the problem was that these conditions seemed too good, good for content creators, good for users, but offering no benefit to the company.

Keeping only ten percent for operating costs—wouldn’t that be a huge loss?

Even if it were for public welfare to enhance the company’s reputation, efficiency should still be a consideration, right?

This “Useful APP” would take a long time to develop, burn through a lot of money, and show results slowly. It wouldn’t have much influence before truly bearing fruit, so what was the point?

Even considering the best case scenario, if it became popular in a few years or even a decade later, who could think that far ahead?

That’s why Professor Kong felt confused and thought something seemed strange about all this.

Yu Ping’an was silent for a moment, then said, “Professor Kong, I also asked Mr. Pei this question.”

“Mr. Pei said that some things just need someone to do them.”

“He wants to create a clean space without garbage on the internet.”

Professor Kong Zhemin was silent for a moment, then nodded: “Alright, I agree.”

“This matter… whether it makes money or not isn’t important, whether it succeeds or not isn’t important.”

“What’s important is the significance of the matter itself.”

Yu Ping’an’s eyes lit up: “Thank you so much, Professor Kong! With you on board, many things will be much easier!”

Kong Zhemin smiled: “No need to thank me, I should thank you. Companies with such a strong sense of social responsibility, like Tenda, are truly rare.”

“Mr. Pei is truly an extraordinary entrepreneur.”

Yu Ping’an couldn’t help but marvel that Mr. Pei’s charm was indeed powerful!

He could feel that Mr. Pei’s words had deeply moved Professor Kong.

As a person of his stature, the professor had already reached a state of being above worldly concerns, having achieved success and fame. He spent his days teaching and researching, and if something didn’t interest him, no amount of money could persuade him.

But Mr. Pei’s single statement had persuaded Professor Kong!

Professor Kong Zhemin’s participation not only added another heavyweight to the literature section of the Useful APP, guaranteeing the professionalism and quality of various content, but more importantly, it would make it easier to invite more experts when expanding to other fields.

When experts from different fields all gathered together, a cluster effect would form—more and more quality content, more and more excellent producers, and naturally more and more users.

It was certainly a great start!

…

…

October 26, Wednesday.

OTTO Technology.

The AEEIS development team was working intensely on research and development.

Current artificial intelligence assistant technology is simply divided into two parts: frontend and backend.

The frontend mainly involved speech recognition and speech synthesis technology, converting user speech into text, and then converting the returned text results into speech output.

The backend processed user requests with programs and returned the most matching results.

Overall, the current mobile phone artificial intelligence assistants were mainly responsible for four dimensions: device control and system function calls, third-party application support, conversation and intelligence level, and skill learning ability.

The initial artificial intelligence assistant technology was provided by Xunke Technology, and various manufacturers were only updating and optimizing on this basis.

But how well an intelligent assistant actually worked depended on the extent to which manufacturers had optimized these four dimensions.

Chang You decided that in this development cycle, all efforts would be primarily focused on system function calls and conversation, and intelligence levels.

Although third-party application support and skill learning ability were also important, these involved more content to develop, and possibly only a portion of users would have such needs, so they were given lower priority.

The so-called system function calls meant users controlled phone system functions with voice commands.

For example, if a user said “weather,” the intelligent assistant would automatically display the weather page on the screen and read out tomorrow’s weather conditions and temperature changes through voice.

Similarly, calculator, calendar, memo, phone calls, text messages, and other functions could all be controlled by the intelligent assistant, bringing users a certain level of convenience.

As for conversation and intelligence level, this referred to how the intelligent assistant would respond when users asked more personalized questions.

For instance, when asked “Who is your father?”, some intelligent assistants would answer “My father is the product manager in the development department,” while others might answer “A group of innovative smart people.”

Strictly speaking, this point didn’t have much practical significance, but it would make AEEIS more distinctive.

According to Mr. Pei’s requirements, AEEIS was an artificial intelligence without emotions, so while other voice assistants all used anthropomorphic voices, AEEIS would adopt an emotionless mechanical voice.

Now that the “character setting” was established, it had to be maintained, with good coordination in other aspects as well.

These customizations, done well and matching AEEIS’s personality and voice, would show that the product had a high level of completion.

Previously, the day after finalizing the name AEEIS, Director Zhu Xiaocai had approached Chang You, wanting to use an artificial intelligence name for his movie and game.

The two departments had already collaborated on “Beautiful Tomorrow,” so naturally they thought of working together again. Chang You told Zhu Xiaocai about the AEEIS project, and Zhu Xiaocai readily agreed to use the name in the movie and game as well.

They could also use the popularity of the movie or game to promote AEEIS, so why not?

Chang You came out of the meeting room, having just gone over some key functions with several core team members.

After taking a sip of tea, Chang You noticed several new messages in the small group chat created by department heads. One of them was from Yu Ping’an.

This group wasn’t for casual chatting but for departments to simply share any developments.

Yu Ping’an: “The ‘Useful APP’ successfully invited Professor Kong Zhemin to join!”

Chang You put down his teacup, feeling curious.

Useful APP?

What was that?