Due to Li Yanhong's introduction at the press conference, and the real-time detection algorithm's connection with the government, it has become a very important source of income for Baidu.

This has led to the employees of the Shanghai branch of Baidu being basically well-known to Meng Fanqi.

Due to Wang Kai's successful promotion in the Changping District of Yanjing, the combination of new technology and the intelligent and efficient office of government agencies has been regarded as a positive example.

A case that caused a certain amount of social public opinion was handled at lightning speed, which was a great political achievement for the relevant personnel.

Therefore, when discussing artificial intelligence technology, everyone is very generous with their praise.

Even the deputy-level officials with real power in the Ministry of Public Security publicly praised artificial intelligence technology.

Although it was not a very formal conference, nor was it a stamped red-headed document, in the cautious style of the government officials of China, it already carried considerable weight.

As the second most important city in China, Shanghai naturally became one of the primary cities of concern for Baidu's implementation of AI.

While Meng Fanqi was reporting the results in Sydney, the Shanghai branch of Baidu had already begun to make contact with the various district governments of Shanghai and had made some progress.

And some small-scale contracts, similar to the Yanjing Hydrological Station, have already been secured.

Following this trend, the year-end bonus is also visibly going to increase by several months.

The source of all this comes from this overly young college student in front of them.

The likes and dislikes of the working people are so pure. It's one thing to be strong and powerful, and everyone will just laugh and praise you.

But if you can get me an extra two months of bonus at the end of the year, then you're my family.

After two days of rapid development at Baidu, the group of people at the Shanghai branch insisted on treating Meng Fanqi to a meal.

Meng Fanqi looked around and didn't see any familiar faces from his previous job, possibly because he arrived too early, or perhaps his former colleagues were in other branches.

He had intended to decline, but then he thought that there weren't many people who had connected artificial intelligence projects with the government, so it wouldn't hurt to ask them for advice.

Since the Third Grade Hospital of Shanghai had sent him an email, and considering the current situation nationwide, Meng Fanqi planned to open the company in Shanghai.

In that case, it was necessary to learn from the experience of the Shanghai branch of Baidu.

The scale of this meal was not large, and it was not necessary for everyone from the Shanghai branch of Baidu to attend.

Instead, one or two representatives from each department, about ten people in total, found a barbecue restaurant and chatted while grilling.

A senior backend engineer from the software department of the Shanghai branch of Baidu, who looked to be about thirty-three or thirty-four years old, came, and Meng Fanqi couldn't remember how he was addressed when he was introduced, but everyone called him Old Li.

Another representative from the software department was a young engineer specializing in databases and systems, similar to Wang Kai, in his twenties. His name was Jiang Mingxuan, and he and Wang Kai formed a triumphant combination.

From the way they interacted and conversed, it was clear that Wang Kai was very familiar with them, which struck Meng Fanqi as somewhat strange.

Upon further inquiry, he learned that Wang Kai had worked at the Shanghai branch for a period of time, but then moved to Yanjing to establish the AI Deep Learning Research Institute, where he received better treatment.

With his relevant background, he applied internally and was subsequently transferred to Yanjing.

For him, starting a business in Shanghai was a win-win situation, so it's no wonder he was so enthusiastic after hearing that Meng Fanqi wanted to establish the company in Shanghai.

After chatting with the Shanghai Baidu team for a while, Meng Fanqi felt that the overall attitude of Shanghai towards artificial intelligence was relatively indifferent and not proactive enough.

From an entrepreneurial perspective, between 2013 and 2016, Shanghai, or China as a whole, did not provide strong support for the AI industry.

Originally, the change in Shanghai's attitude towards the AI industry began in 2017.

China directly issued the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" from the State Council, explicitly requiring that by 2030, artificial intelligence should take "three steps," and encouraging localities to create clusters and innovation highlands for the artificial intelligence industry.

It can be hard to make great work when its stolen from bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

When the policy was issued, Shanghai's response was the fastest, proposing development goals and implementing corresponding policies.

This was partly due to the rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry, and partly because in 2017, the overall internet industry, which had been brilliant for more than ten years, began to stabilize and move towards a stock market.

From prosperity to decline, even Shanghai was facing the difficult problem of industrial transformation."It's too late in 2017. I need to figure out a way to use AI to achieve some major accomplishments and push the government to start paying attention to this area sooner." This way, it would not only benefit the country's competitiveness in this area in the future, but also reduce some of the resistance to entrepreneurship.

Unconsciously, Meng Fanqi had already established a cooperation between the real-time detection algorithm and the local government in Yan Jing.

This also caught the attention of the high-level officials at the Ministry of Public Security to the artificial intelligence technology.

However, this kind of image detection and analysis is somewhat similar to the traditional image processing methods, and Meng Fanqi is not sure if outsiders can distinguish the difference.

Moreover, this level of progress is probably not enough to prompt the country to formulate relevant AI industry development strategies several years in advance.

"The real-time detection has taken the first step, but if it's just this, the influence is far from enough. What I need is something that can reach every person, with broad influence and high popularity. It would be best if it can keep up with the trend of mobile platforms."

As Meng Fanqi pondered this issue, he chatted with Baidu's staff.

During the conversation, they frequently talked about the market share of some mobile apps, joking that Baidu was like the Grim Reaper for app acquisitions.

No matter how popular an app is, once Baidu acquires it, it will cool down within a few months or a year.

Not to mention smaller apps, even the one they were talking about now, 91, was a huge deal.

This 91 is not a strange 91, but the 91 Assistant for mobile phones.

Just a month or two before Meng Fanqi first came into contact with Li Yanhong, Baidu used a sky-high price of 1.9 billion US dollars to acquire the 91 Assistant.

However, within two or three years, with the progress of Apple's own platform and the release of platforms by major mobile phone manufacturers, the 91 Assistant quickly cooled down. The 91 Apple Assistant stopped updating in 2017, and the Android channel was directly offline in 2020.

But that's a story for another time. At the moment, the 91 Assistant, which was just acquired for a sky-high price, was at the peak of its popularity, with an accumulated application download volume exceeding 10 billion.

On average, each person had downloaded it close to ten times.

"Perhaps the first product I should make should be a popular app, not a paper or some kind of technology," Meng Fanqi reflected on his own immature thinking.

After being reborn, in order to obtain initial capital, he spent more than half a year writing code, conducting experiments, and preparing papers.

This led to a bad habit of thinking.

Perhaps this method of papers + technology could give him some reputation and status in the academic world, but to truly make the technology accessible to everyone, he needed to create a product that everyone could use, like ChatGPT.

Meng Fanqi carefully pondered this and realized that an app for editing expressions and character ages might be very beneficial to him at this point in time.