|Interviewer: Daozi, He Ying
|Interviewee: Wang Hailiang
|Edited by: Yuan Ruibin
|Designer: Tan Jialu
introduction
Wang Hailiang, co-founder and CEO of Chatopera, is the most valuable expert of Microsoft artificial intelligence (MVP). Graduated from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, joined IBM for four years, successively worked in the software development laboratory and the university of new technology innovation. Since 2016, he has worked in a new company Triangle AI algorithm engineer and He is responsible for the development of intelligent dialogue system and the author of Intelligent Question Answering and Deep Learning.
From a teenager who loves programming to a contributor to the open source world, Wang Hailiang has explained the geek spirit of this era to us. The following content is Wang Hailiang's self description, which was slightly changed when sorting out.
Host 2015 Node.js Live Beijing Station
The starting point of the story is even longer. There are always some precious moments in memory, or small casual moments, which guide the future.
When my sophomore went to the canteen to have a meal, I caught a glimpse of a job advertisement about IBM at the corner of the second floor, which said "Stop working for ordinary people and start walking with legends", like a lightning strike in my heart. I have learned programming and participated in competitions before, but this time I really felt the value of learning software programming. When my roommate saw it, he joked and said that he would never pay any attention to you, but in my heart, with the recognition of "stop working for ordinary people", I set my ambition to join IBM.
At that time, IBM just released the "Smart Earth" strategy, and it happened that my lab tutor plan was working on a project of RFID based positioning system, which needed to implement a prototype system combining software and hardware, and I spent almost all my time on it. A few undergraduate students, without any foundation, wrote software while running. I mainly do software. I also used this project to join the second National Undergraduate Innovative Experiment Plan. In order to learn several programming languages and many other programming knowledge on my own, I stayed up late, skipped classes, and even failed my exams. I didn't go home during the summer vacation of my sophomore year, but stayed in the laboratory for half a month.
Beijing Post Laboratory Overlooking the Night View of Xishan Mountain
I took many detours in self-study. After I started working, I gradually found a suitable way to quickly learn a new technology. During this period, I left an impression that I was not good at talking. I was not like this before because I was addicted to developing software. I always had some exceptions in my mind, thinking about why these problems occurred, or the design pattern of the programming framework, or the working principle of the algorithm. It can be said that software programming has changed my character.
With the conclusion of the innovation project, I took an active part in the technical community activities from my junior year. At that time, the students in my class were not keen on these activities. Many people studied the research guarantee and went abroad, which made me feel like a stranger. For this reason, I also read Gladwell's Outlier, which also gave me great influence, The most well-known discovery in the book is the "Ten Thousand Hour Law". The author uses his research to prove that "the reason why genius is extraordinary in people's eyes is not that talent is superior, but that it has made continuous efforts. 10000 hours of tempering is a necessary condition for anyone to become a world-class master from ordinary". At this time, I made clear my future plan: 10000 hours to become a professional software engineer. It has been more than ten years since then. Kazuo Inamori mentioned in his "Huofa" that people can be divided into three types: spontaneous combustion type, combustible type and incombustible type. "A self igniting person can burn without any supervision around him". I think I am a self ignited person.
The days of walking with legends
During the summer vacation of junior year, IBM Cloud Computing Department recruited interns to engage in pre-sales technical support for cloud computing Internet of Things software products. My work experience in the school laboratory made me become an intern for this position smoothly, responsible for applying the new technology of IBM to the traditional industry at that time. After graduation in 2011, I officially joined IBM and became a software engineer. IBM mainly serves the Fortune 500. My job is R&D, and I also have contacts in sales or customer support. My work experience during this period has made me feel the same about IBM's corporate culture - to achieve customers, to innovate, and to be honest and responsible; It also enables me to better understand some of the concepts of "Built to Last", such as "enterprises should establish good systems", "an excellent organization can constantly innovate and make good products", etc. Today, these cultural concepts have also had a profound impact on me and benefited a lot. The values of innovation, integrity and responsibility took root and took root in my entrepreneurial team, and practiced these concepts in different forms.
Visit Kill Demon Mountain while working in IBM American Laboratory
After 2014, AI has been very mature. In 2016, I came out of the laboratory and planned to combine artificial intelligence with business scenarios, from the realization of business process engine to intelligent service exploration, especially human-computer dialogue system. I wanted to build a business process engine based on natural language, so that the machine could understand people better.
Innovation in large companies will face greater resistance. After experiencing the disadvantages of internal entrepreneurial projects, I hope to join an entrepreneurial team and quickly join in the great changes that are taking place and changing this era. In my resignation letter, I wrote: "Would you capture it or just let it slip? “
Two shoulder frost flowers across mountains and rivers
In a real sense, we embarked on the path of entrepreneurship, starting from joining the company. In 2016, I had a good chat with Don, the founder of the Sino American children's social network, and we agreed with each other's ideas, so we decided to join in. Don has developed a product that has covered hundreds of thousands of users. The idea is to let Chinese children interact with American children in a game like scene, and let them learn from each other. However, due to the difference in time zones, it is often Chinese children who send a message today and get a reply after 12 hours or more. The chat experience is quite bad. I realized that there was a lot of room for improvement with chat robots.
After working on children's English chat robot for some time and completing the pre research of the product, I joined another company that specializes in making chat robots - Triangle Beast, which provides chat and other dialogue services for many large Internet companies. Triangle has a relatively large R&D team. When I joined, I had just completed the round B financing, and the business expanded rapidly. I had a huge investment in technology and more research. My working experience in Triangle is the happiest for me as a software engineer. I still maintain an entrepreneurial culture in the larger team, so that the whole company can flourish.
After working as an algorithm engineer in Triangle for one year, in order to tap my own potential, I plan to start my own business, and talk about this idea with Zhang Kai and Xiang Yu, who have known each other for more than two years, and get approval. In June 2018, Huaxia Chunsong was founded and established the full solution of Chatopera product line to be an enterprise intelligent customer service system. Our three co founders have been engaged in software engineering for 30 years, and all of them are related to enterprise IT research and development. Due to lack of experience in marketing, sales and financing, they have walked on thin ice in the past two years. In less than two years, we have products, users, completed a round of financing, and gradually gained popularity in customer service system solutions. So how are these done?
Let users love your product
On the way to technology, I like open source very much and focus on cultivating my sharing spirit. I got to know the partners and investors of Huaxia Chunsong because we can talk together. What can we talk about? Open source project, open source code. Everyone has the common desire to use new technologies to support new business models, so hit off. This is also true when looking for customers. We open source a large amount of code for our products, release a large number of documents, and do online training courses, write blogs to teach our skills to developers. A good open source project does not just release code, but operates the developer community.
In 2019, he participated in the China Open Source Annual Conference held by the Open Source Society
Many people who do not know about open source do not understand our approach. We mostly use open source, free, and commercially friendly Apache v2.0 and MIT software licenses. Then why do we choose this way?
The first open source project I participated in was OpenStack. From it, I learned that the important operation mode of open source projects and the original open source technology are so advanced and innovative, and they cooperate with engineers from different companies. What's more, these companies compete with each other. Open source community is a place where people gather popularity. Where there are people, there will be rivers and lakes, and good products can be made. The product market is large enough for competitors to become close partners. In 2015, I started to operate Node.js Beijing Community, held 22 offline sharing salons, and also assisted other sponsors to carry out open source activities. From a developer who only focuses on his own skills, he has become an organizer, helping many people improve their skills, and helping them meet more community friends, including Microsoft Open Source, Open Source Society, etc. BJ NodeJS Club has become a circle with a strong atmosphere of learning and communication. The in-depth communication has enabled me to better understand the thoughts of different people and gave me more courage to face my own ideals.
At a Node.js community gathering, when the weather was nearly minus 30, the enthusiasm could not be stopped
What is the meaning of open source? Why does open source become the investment direction of big companies? My answer is:
Open source helps software developers to develop users' favorite products at the lowest cost and in the fastest way.
Compared with the mature commercial software, the newly opened source code will have many problems. However, with the extremely low sales cost and wide channels, the open source software will also have its users. The market share occupied by these orders with low demand and sales volume can enable start-ups to survive and get the opportunity to gradually optimize until maturity. Based on a theory, There's nothing like Long tail theory It is more suitable here. Similarly, large companies choose open source because it is the fastest way to make software mature. However, any developer should dialectically look at open source. Open source also causes harm to developers. This is just like in Three Bodies, the great god level civilization leaves its own dead line, which spreads into the black field. The emergence of the black field breaks the will of other civilizations. When the universe is covered by the black field and the universe collapses, any civilization disappears, returns to zero, and once the dead line is released, This civilization has no other way but to increase its speed, because it also has to escape from the region behind it.
To open source, we must continue to open source, and constantly enhance the action force of open source. Chunsong customer service is our open source intelligent customer service system for small and medium-sized enterprises, and Clause is our open source Chinese semantic understanding system, including other open source projects. In fact, we are running a race against ourselves, and we are afraid that we cannot make products that users like.
Strive to create long-term value
At the end of 2018, my friend and I co authored Intelligent Q&A and Deep Learning, which was published. On Douban and JD, this book still has a 98% favorable rating. In order to write a book, I go to work after drinking a cup of coffee every morning. After work, I get home at 9 p.m. and lie in bed for a while. I drink another cup of coffee at 10 a.m. until 2 a.m. The next day, I get up and drink another cup of coffee before going to work. I also continue to write a book after a meeting with my colleagues. After this state lasted for a month, my body began to be unbearable, and I saw my white hair for the first time.
Author team, starting from Wang Hailiang, Chen Kexin, Lin Xuming, Li Sizhen and Li Zhuohuan on the left
During the writing of the book, she communicated with Ms. Zheng Liujie from the blog perspective of the Electronic Industry Press for many times. When naming the book, the press thought: "The book name should follow the hot spots, such as TensorFlow, Python. Otherwise, how can people search you?" But I think: "depending on the heat, we should search now, and then after a few years no one will search. It is better to write a classic book". After thinking about it, I decided to use the title of the book "Intelligent Q&A and Deep Learning". Behind this is my consistent idea: to create long-term value.
A Glimpse of Intelligent Q&A and Deep Learning
In 2020, "Huaxia Spring Pine" will achieve brilliant results. At present, our product R&D is more focused on the application in the psychological consultation industry to help the psychological consultation platform build artificial intelligence solutions.
AI has no mystery. It relies on a large amount of data for probability calculation. When the sample space is enough to cover some small probability events, it can replace most of the artificial. Our products are more likely to help people to do the repetitive work. The first sentence of Buddha's enlightenment was that "all living beings have the wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata, and they can't prove it just because they are paranoid and persistent". Welcome to contact and exchange corrections.
Chatbot activities and exchanges with participants
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