Author: Xiaoyan
Editor: Caiyun
Source: New Spark
Image Source: Generated by Wujie AI
Recently, there has been news of personnel changes in the senior management of Alibaba. It was reported that Chen Xuesong, the vice president of Alibaba Cloud, has resigned and is very likely to enter the AI field. In response, Alibaba Cloud quickly stated that Chen Xuesong had left the company as part of normal procedures. Chen Xuesong's status on Maimai shows that his tenure at Alibaba Cloud ended in December 2023, after serving for 1 year and 7 months.
In 2023, we witnessed the flourishing and intense development in the field of AI, which undoubtedly presents both opportunities and challenges, as well as high risks and high returns. In this context, we have reason to believe that in 2024, more and more tech giants will enter the AI field to prove their worth.
Farewell to Traditional Choices in Favor of AI: Chen Xuesong is not the first, nor will he be the last
It is understood that Chen Xuesong joined Alibaba in 2022 as the vice president of Alibaba Cloud, with a P10 job level, mainly responsible for the digital government business line. Before joining Alibaba Cloud, he served as the senior vice president and general manager of the city business unit at Megvii Technology, responsible for intelligent security and related businesses.
Interestingly, in 2023, the year when AI gained widespread attention, Alibaba lost many high-level tech giants. In March of last year, Jia Yangqing, an AI scientist and vice president of Alibaba, announced his formal resignation as the technical vice president of Alibaba to embark on AI entrepreneurship, focusing on AI architecture. In the same month, Chen Junbo, the head of the Alibaba DAMO Academy's autonomous driving division, was confirmed to have left to start a business, founding a cleaning robot company with the former CEO of Alibaba's robotics division, Gu Zulin. In May, another senior technical executive at Alibaba, Wu Qinghan, also left the company to venture into the field of large-scale models, causing quite a stir in the industry as he was once hailed as "Alibaba's guardian" and "the man who let Jack Ma sleep soundly." In July, Shen Jiaxiang, the head of the Alibaba DAMO Academy's autonomous driving lab and a senior researcher at Alibaba Group, also left to start a business.
The tide of time moves forward, and we cannot make any changes.
In fact, it's not just Alibaba; many major companies including JD.com, Meituan, Baidu, and ByteDance have experienced a "period of exodus" for high-level talents in recent years. Many of these individuals have directly joined the AI entrepreneurship track after leaving:
Zhou Bowen, the former head of AI at JD.com, founded Xianyuan Technology in 2021 and released the "AI Hero Post" in February last year, recruiting partners to jointly build the Chinese version of ChatGPT. After leaving Kuaishou, Li Yan, the former head of MMU, established the AI company "Yuanshi Technology" in the second half of 2022 to conduct research and development of multimodal large models.
In February last year, Wang Huiwen, the former co-founder of Meituan, announced his entry into the AI field on a social platform, founding the new company "Beyond Light Years" to build China's OpenAI…
On March 24, it was reported by the media that Wang Changhu, the former head of visual technology at ByteDance, had resigned and formed a completely new entrepreneurial team. His entrepreneurial direction will focus on the visual multimodal algorithm platform for generative AI, focusing on various vertical application scenarios related to vision.
It is clear that in the matter of transitioning to the AI track, Chen Xuesong is not the first, nor will he be the last.
AI Field Development is Heating Up, Triggering a Talent War
With the start of the AI entrepreneurship wave among industry leaders and the continuous escalation of the arms race among major internet companies, a new round of AI talent war is about to begin.
According to the Big Data Research Institute of Liepin, the "ChatGPT-related Field Employment Insight Report" shows that the current demand for AI talent is nearly three times that of six years ago. Among them, the development of ChatGPT has directly driven the growth of positions in the AIGC field, with new positions increasing by 42.51% year-on-year in the past year.
The scarcity of AI talent determines that their value is destined to be high. For example, the monthly salary of an NLP algorithm director can reach up to 70,000 yuan (13 months), which means an annual salary of up to 910,000 yuan. For talents in AIGC research and development, the highest annual salary can reach 1.12 million yuan; for AIGC algorithm engineers, the highest annual salary can reach 1.28 million yuan.
On one hand, there is an extremely tense employment situation in a sluggish overall environment, and on the other hand, there is a huge talent gap in the AI field. The future direction of employment is self-evident.
Alibaba's Business Aims at AI: Becoming the Most Open Cloud in the AI Era
Even Alibaba itself has realized the importance of mastering the discourse power in the AI field and doing supporting work well.
In June 2023, Alibaba's second boot finally landed.
On June 20, Alibaba's official information showed that Zhang Yong would step down as chairman of the Alibaba Group's board of directors, and CEO and Alibaba "senior veteran" Cai Chongxin would take over as CEO, with Wu Yongming taking over as CEO.
In fact, this was the largest top-level organizational adjustment since Alibaba announced the "1+6+N" business split in March 2023.
At Alibaba, there has always been an old saying: "Adjusting the production relationship must be in line with the requirements of the development of productive forces." After the group split in March, it did indeed develop the "narrative structure" according to this logic: Alibaba's business lines developed independently and carried out independent financing and listing.
And Alibaba's core operation has also shifted from "managing specific businesses" to "innovating and incubating the main base." Based on this, the group's top-level design has also made corresponding changes.
After the reform, Alibaba will focus more on how to better support AIGC business.
On October 31, 2023, at the Alibaba Cloud Summit, Cai Chongxin, founding partner and chairman of Alibaba Group, said in his speech, "Alibaba Cloud aims to become the most open cloud in the AI era. Currently, 80% of tech companies in China and half of the large model companies run on Alibaba Cloud. The era of intelligence is opening up, and artificial intelligence will become a new type of productivity for various industries."
Cai Chongxin also proposed that Alibaba is the first large internet company in the world to "move all businesses to the cloud." Alibaba will continue to increase its research and development investment in Alibaba Cloud, allowing all industries and developers to use the most advanced cloud computing technology.
As the AI era develops, the demand for computing power becomes higher. Currently, 80% of tech companies in China and half of the large model companies run on Alibaba Cloud. In addition, the AI open-source community, Moda, has gathered 2.7 million developers and more than 23,000 models, with model downloads exceeding 100 million times.
It can be seen that China's AI industry and the development of large models are growing rapidly and are in a stage of vigorous development. With the continuous progress of cloud computing, big data, and intelligent algorithms, artificial intelligence has become an important force driving innovation and development in various industries.
As Cai Chongxin said, "Artificial intelligence will become a new type of productivity for various industries, which means that artificial intelligence will play an important role in fields such as healthcare, transportation, finance, and manufacturing, bringing about huge changes to the economy and society."
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