Hardcore crisis

The UI interface is small and fresh, and the functions are not much different from other systems. After playing around for a few times, there is really nothing outstanding about the functions. It is quite satisfactory. It neither makes people feel difficult to use nor makes users feel confused. Liang, it can be said that if a flash package like this were to appear on the Internet, it would be lost to everyone soon, and it would be difficult to attract other people's attention.

Of course, this is a preliminary test version, and there is no need to pursue novelty in many functions. It is enough to be able to be used normally. The real brilliance of "Pioneer" lies in other places.

Slide your finger to open the settings, slide to the "Personal Voice Assistant" below, click in and select to turn it on. The entire phone interface immediately goes dark, and when it suddenly lights up again, a whole row of prompt words appears.

"Welcome to the Pioneer Personal Voice Assistant, please give me a name."

"Well, just call me BOX."

"Okay, from now on I will call you BOX. How should I call you?"

"Call me developer."

"Yes, developer, the wake word has been set. Next, BOX will launch a series of services for you..."

After a few simple conversations, those who have used voice assistants for a long time will immediately realize the anomaly. If you switch to an ordinary voice assistant, even if it supports custom wake words, it is impossible to understand natural language to this extent. Instead, it needs to be rigidly set step by step. Wherever it is like an ordinary conversation like Lu Yuan, it can be completed. all settings.

It's unbelievably simple...but it's really that simple.

The development of technology is to provide convenient services to human beings. The smarter the AI, the easier it is to set up, without spending a lot of time and energy to record over and over again.

But one such test result doesn’t mean much. One of the difficulties in speech recognition lies in the recognition sampling rate in a complex environment, and the other lies in the recognition accuracy of various language series. The former is easy to solve, while the latter was two years ago. Google's speech recognition error rate is still 25%, which has been reduced to 1/16 so far, which is still far away from normal human-machine communication.

Lu Yuan reset the settings and then tested them in different languages ​​or dialects such as Cantonese, Sichuan, Tianjin, Shandong, English, Japanese, French, etc. The result was that the Pioneer recognition performance was very significant, except for an accidental recognition error. , the recognition rate of large sections of dialogue reached 100%.

This result is obviously extremely amazing. Google spent two years and went through the efforts of hundreds of engineers, but it still failed to achieve this step.

"BOX!"

Turning off the screen of his phone and putting it aside, Lu Yuan shouted softly from a distance of about seven or eight meters.

In an instant, the originally dark screen suddenly activated and lit up, and a soft female voice came from the mobile phone: "Developer, what help do you need?"

"Send me a text message and tell me that I won't be here tonight because I have something to do."

Lu Yuan explained in an ordinary tone, no, even a deliberately slowed down speaking speed. Generally speaking, voice assistants have a rhythm problem in collecting human voices. Whether the user speaks fast or slow, the voice assistant cannot If it is recognized normally, it will stupidly ask the questions in the previous paragraph.

But at this time, Lu Yuan deliberately slowed down his speech, but the personal assistant correctly recognized his command and quickly entered the text message sending interface, "Excuse me, developer, who do you want to send the text message to?"

"Very good, no need, delete the text message."

"Okay, developer, the text message has been withdrawn."

"Turn on the music for me..."

"I'm not in a good mood, help me choose a song that makes me feel happy."

"Okay, pause the music and check the weather for tonight..."

Several consecutive conversations with the personal voice assistant named BOX were all completed quickly and accurately, without any problems during the process.

What is surprising is that all the orders above Lu Yuan were issued casually after executing the previous order.

All current voice assistants can basically execute the current command, but they cannot be linked to the next command. That is to say, if the user issues a command and the voice assistant completes execution, then it will no longer be able to complete the remaining tasks through voice commands. , even Apple's Siri must shout "Hey, Siri" again to reactivate the voice assistant.

This means that once the user wants to use the voice assistant for a long time, he cannot continuously issue commands for the voice assistant to execute, and often has to activate the voice assistant multiple times.

And just like Lu Yuan did just now, it took at least five minutes before he suddenly asked BOX to check the weather tonight for him when the music was playing. In this way, the personal voice assistant needed to overcome the problem of playing music first. Interference, accurately collect Lu Yuan's voice, and at the same time it must be on standby at all times, paying attention to Lu Yuan's orders every second.

After a few simple tests in ten minutes, you can see that Alpha is much more perfect than the previous version. It is not a problem to directly become the final version that transcends Beta and RC versions and reaches Release.

"BOX, what do you think of me?"

"Developer, during this eleven-minute encounter, I found you to be a friendly person."

"Oh, why do you think I'm friendly?" Lu Yuan asked with interest.

"A person's character can be observed from his words and deeds. Your friendly character has been undoubtedly shown, just like the moon in the dark night. Please stop hiding yourself."

"BOX, you are so interesting."

"Thank you for the compliment, I think so too."

Lu Yuan had to marvel that this was just a small program and it performed like this even when it was offline. If it were connected to the Internet and let Sonny process the data, it would be even more amazing.

"Sonny, let's just upgrade the version number to the Beta version. I think it is quite complete and there are basically no major functional problems."

In Lu Yuan's view, although this version of the personal assistant still has some minor problems such as inflexibility, it can be said that compared with other voice assistants on the market, such as Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Google Now, they are still just for users to try out. At the point where it is far from qualified to truly realize productivity and help in life, however, the "pioneer" already has this qualification and can normally enter the daily life of users and become an indispensable helper for users.

Its excellence is self-evident, and what we need to do now is to think about how to promote it.

"Well, maybe I have to change my name."

The role of names cannot be underestimated. When most people think of voice assistants, they think of Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri. This is the brand image. In this era of positioning, if you want to do a good job in marketing, you must brainwash people. A simple and easy-to-understand A catchy brand name is extremely powerful in promoting products.

However, "Pioneer" and "PX-1" can only be used as internal code names. If they are really used as brand names, the promotion effect will become negative.

"What name should I give it?"

"Benben? Guoguo? Xiaojie? Xiaonan?"

Lu Yuan's eyes suddenly lit up: "By the way, let's call her 'Coco'. Make her voice softer and younger, and set it directly to 17 years old... But in this case, it's better to set it as a kind of virtual idol assistant."

There is a group that cannot be ignored in this era. Although they do not have girlfriends, cannot find girlfriends, and do not even want to find girlfriends, this age group has considerable spending power. Groups like this in China, Japan, and South Korea are quite large. Once we can grasp the consumer psychology of this group, it will be of great help to Lu Yuan's subsequent steps.

What's more, directly turning the voice assistant into a virtual idol will increase people's sense of involvement. Human beings are perceptual creatures. With the AI ​​level of "Pioneer" and the settings like virtual idols, it is extremely easy for people to become accustomed to and attached to it after long-term contact. If it really reaches that level, "Pioneer" will be completely integrated into everyone's lives and become an alternative electronic pet.