From parents teaching by themselves, to reading teaching materials to "grasp the key points" for children, to purchasing learning machines, tablets, dictionary pens and other educational equipment. Children are firmly at the heart of Chinese families' attention.
The question is, what is the use of learning machines?If this question is not effectively answered, these multi-functional products will inevitably become an "IQ tax".
Returning to education, we ask about its essence, which is simple but timeless: to teach each child according to his or her aptitude, and to provide each child with the most suitable educational strategies and methods to meet his or her individual needs.
For today's Chinese children, on the one hand, the educational concept of the whole society is changing, from the major policies, to this group of "post-80s" and "post-90s" Kochi parents, all of whom are honored with personalized learning ability trainingOn the other hand, the habit of online learning has also been gradually cultivated, the trend of traditional education mode and education informatization has been continuously integrated and optimized, and the favorable factors of continuous innovation and iteration of technology have been superimposed, and intelligent learning hardware is ushering in a stage where it can show its talents.
The learning machine is perhaps the best illustration of this proposition. Standing out from the dazzling intelligent education terminals such as student tablets, children's smart watches, and wrong question printers, the learning machine with both functions and upwards gives the best path for the integration of science and technology and education: it is not to subvert the essence of education, but to point to the original intention of education.
An inescapable "problem".
Is it a good boy who can answer questions, or is it a good boy who can ask questions?
This question is not only "hard to cry" for Chinese children and Chinese parents, but also Xueersi, one of the most well-known education companies in China established for 20 years, eager to seek a breakthrough and find an answer under the talent strategy of the new era.
In the middle of 2021, Xueersi quietly set up a learning machine project internally, but the progress was far from expectations. At that time, it was the most difficult moment for the company's transformation, affected by policies, the main business was frustrated, and the number of employees plummeted. But education is still the inevitable path for this content-based company, "We are thinking about what the learning style should be in this AI era." Peng Zhuangzhuang, president and CFO of the company, said.
To be a learning machine or other educational hardware, Xueersi seems to be very "cautious". In June 2022, the smart learning lamp was tentatively launched, and the pat lecture machine was launched in September, and then there was little action to the outside world. The learning machine project, which was given high hopes, was pressed three times in two years, and the product was delayed. It wasn't until 2023 that Xueersi began to slowly enter the stage, and in February, a generation of learning machines was belated. In August, MATHGPT, a 100-billion-level large model in the field of mathematics, was launched. In December, the second-generation learning machine was launched.
At the same time, the education industry is unusually lively. The old giant New Oriental quickly turned around and entered the live broadcast to bring goods, setting off a huge wave in the industryYu Minhong's old comrade-in-arms Chen Xiangdong took the helm of Gao Tu, who also chose the same route, and the results have improvedApe Counseling is even more radical in experimenting with areas such as coffee, maternal and child care, and clothing. Educational smart hardware is also in a scuffle: Youdao iterates two versions of learning machines in three months, homework helps launch two generations ......of smart flashcards in two months, and a variety of smart hardware such as smart printers, smart learning lights, and smart learning desks emerge in an endless streamEveryone wants to try the "hot model" and seize the first-mover advantage.
The industry is changing, the educational goals are changing, and Xueersi needs a breakthrough point.
At that time, the person in charge of Xueersi intelligent learning hardware did a lot of research. After the investigation, it was found that the "ash eating rate" of learning machines in the market was as high as more than 50%. The proposition that Xueersi has to face is: why does educational hardware such as learning machines exist?What exactly does it solve?
In April 2022, after more than half a year of research and development, the prototype of the learning machine was placed in front of the Xueersi hardware team, and the plummeting usage rate after the internal test poured cold water on the team, and the original new product launch plan could only be shelved. Immediately afterwards, Zhao Puzheng, who grew up from a front-line Xueersi teacher, became the new head of the intelligent learning hardware team under great pressure.
Zhao Puzheng, who is deeply involved in teaching and research, knows very well that "high quality", "personalization" and "large-scale" have always been the "impossible triangle" in the field of education. In the past ten years, Xueersi has been looking for a solution to break through the "impossible triangle": in 2003, through unified teaching and research and open classrooms, offline classrooms have achieved high standards of rapid replication, and initially achieved high quality and scale offline. In 2008, Xueersi began to explore the online model, and after nearly ten years of exploration, the dual-teacher online large class with the help of real-time interaction and other technological tools gradually matured, achieving high online quality and greater scale.
Good content is the foundation of learning and thinking, and it is within reach on a large scale on the basis of Internet capabilities. Only in the solution of personalized learning, even Xueersi has not found a good solution in the past, but this is the core of education.
AI brings new solutions.
At the end of 2022, ChatGPT, which detonated the world, was launched, and the progress of AI technology gave Zhao Puzheng a lot of inspiration. Personalized teaching takes advantage of artificial intelligence technology. People suddenly realized that it was possible for ordinary people to use smart tools to improve their work ability and expand their knowledge. All walks of life are experiencing the baptism of AI fever, and "AI + education" has become one of the most imaginative stories in the market.
Zhao Puzheng began to explore a different possibility, combining "content + technology", breaking through the category of "learning resources" in the learning machines on the market, but through AI technology, to give users a complete and systematic learning solution.
AI technology really confronts the essence of education – personalized learning.
Since 2020, Xueersi has been working on an exclusive AI team to tackle key problems with automatic problem-solving technology. The automatic problem solving technology is used to provide adaptive question recommendations upside down, and the accurate relevance is as high as 80-90%, which is much higher than the industry average standard. Based on the Xueersi large model MATHGPT, which was filed in November 2023, it provides automatic math problem solving, complex application problem correction, Chinese and English composition correction, and personalized AI step-by-step lecture questions. From dreams to reality.
In addition to more advanced hardware configuration, 20 years of self-developed content system precipitated in teaching and research, AI questioning, AI correction and other intelligent tools, the biggest highlight is the large model MathGPT, which locks weak points through "Q&A interaction", which makes it possible to reproduce one-to-one personalized learning of offline teachers.
The development of AI technology has come naturally, bringing a new solution to the "impossible triangle". "The learning machine is the most stable, the best form that can carry technology and a large amount of high-quality content at the same time. After three years of exploration, the answer is on paper.
Bet on educational hardware.
The late-blooming Xueersi learning machine has finally been launched. Prior to this, the rush of educational hardware has begun, which is regarded as a battlefield that must be won by educational technology companies.
On the one hand, the market scale brought about by home learning under the epidemic has risen repeatedly, allowing practitioners to see opportunities. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the size of China's educational smart hardware market was 32.9 billion yuan in 2021 and is expected to grow to 74.1 billion yuan in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 176%。
On the other hand, home learning is the most important learning scenario in addition to classroom learning. A child spends 8 hours at school and about 3 hours at home, while education and training in the past is only 40 minutes. According to data from the brokerage CICC and IDC, extracurricular training has been restricted, and the shipment of learning tablets has increased significantly, with a year-on-year increase of 18%, and learning machines have undertaken some of the best education needs.
With the development of the economy, the increase in per capita household disposable income, the trend of declining birthrate and refined education, parents' investment in their children has only increased, and the demand for education is no longer limited to solving questions, but truly teaching students according to their aptitude and personalized training.
The times have made it clear that we need children who can ask questions and think independently. In 2010, based on the content of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the "Outline of the National Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020)" was issued, and "focusing on teaching students according to their aptitude" was one of the important directions of the innovative talent training model. In 2019, the "Modernization of China's Education 2035" was issued, which also clarified the important goal of "teaching students according to their aptitude", and proposed to use information technology to accelerate the transformation of the education era and realize the organic integration of large-scale education and personalized training. At the National Education Work Conference held in 2020, the policy level advocated that it is necessary to promote the in-depth integration of education informatization and aptitude-based education, which is an important part of realizing aptitude-based education.
AI, big data and other scientific and technological methods are regarded as the core of solving the problem of personalized learning of intelligent learning hardware, but for the specific implementation, each company is doing different explorations based on different genes.
Since the late 80s and early 90s of the last century, Xiaobawang learning machine was born, and China's learning machine has gone through more than 30 years. Today, the intelligent learning machine that has reached four digits is still a "fragrant and sweet" product in the sales lists of major platforms and shopping mall counters.
The learning machines on the market are roughly divided into three categories, and the three major factions of science and technology, education and training and traditional manufacturers compete differently based on their own data advantages. Science and technology manufacturers are represented by iFLYTEK and Xiaodu, all of which are equipped with large models on learning machines, and learning machines have industry-leading capabilities in AI precision learning, essay correction, and oral evaluationThe manufacturers of the education and training department are represented by Xueersi, Ape Tutoring, Homework Help and Youdao, and their built-in resources have become the core reason for the hot sales of learning machinesTraditional manufacturers, represented by BBK and Reading Lang, win through channels and can directly reach a large number of users.
Which is better?For parents, of course, they don't have to choose, they want everything.
Dissecting the shell of technology, content has always been the basic plate of education. After combining the online sales data of eight learning machine brands on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, CICC found that in addition to hardware configuration, AI performance, high-quality built-in resources and high cost performance are the focus of consumers' attention.
On the content side, Xueersi is unmatched. Based on its nearly 20 years of off-campus training experience, it has been precipitated into the learning machine and has more than 14 million minutes of high-quality self-research resources, of which more than 95% are recorded by Xueersi S-level teachers.
On the technical side, the breakthrough is obvious. The Xueersi model MATHGPT has completed the relevant filing and has passed the review, becoming the first batch of education models that have passed the record, and it is now fully open. Xueersi learning machine will be the core landing product of MATHGPT, and a variety of functions have been launched with large models, among which "AI Dialogue" locates precision learning to the step level through multiple rounds of dialogue, which has achieved intergenerational improvement in terms of accuracy and personalization.
Xueersi has 20 years of accumulation in mathematics data and business, and has the ability to accumulate a large amount of educational data and continue to produce educational data, so I chose to do this difficult but correct thing. Tian Mi, CTO of the company, said that Xueersi hopes to use his years of accumulation in mathematics and AI to do a good job in the mathematical foundation of the AI large model era.
This is a collective bet by education companies, and it is also a reshaping of the industry.
Explore new frontiers.
If the grid is not broken, talents are rare". This is true for the education industry, and it is also true for education.
The new industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence technology has arrived, which is advancing many unimaginable and huge progresses, and at the same time, it is also profoundly changing our talent training model. So far, more than 20 developed countries have formulated development strategies for emerging talents, and more than 100 special programs have been launched to cultivate and introduce talents. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out: "Education, science and technology, and talents are the basic and strategic support for building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. ”
Education is moving into 2In the 0 era, learning is no longer a process of transfer and transmission of knowledge from the inside out, but a two-way interaction between learners and original knowledge and experience to enrich, enrich and transform their knowledge and experience. Technology plays a pivotal role.
Perhaps this is where the greatest value of the market in education lies. From the perspective of the entire industry, Xueersi's new idea of solving problems with learning machines has broadened the business boundaries of educational technology enterprises in intelligent hardware and teaching content, proving that steady and steady educational technology enterprises can take the third way - content + technology.
Education is inherently individualized and needs to vary from person to person. However, it is difficult to achieve thousands of people with content alone, and modeled teaching cannot formulate learning plans and fill in the gapsWith technology alone, it is very likely to be reduced to an empty shell and eventually "eat ashes".
Based on powerful and high-quality teaching content, combined with the emergence of large models, it is indeed expected to bring new changes to the rigid human-computer interaction in the past, such as "AI conversational learning". Xueersi's integration of large models into hardware products not only enhances the competitiveness of hardware products, but also builds a new high-quality content matching mechanism for it.
When more companies are lifted by educational hardware, the key to success is bound to lie in the combination of underlying technical strength and content capabilities.
Looking back at the big waves of the intelligent education hardware track, thinking and making choices seem to run through the entire development process of the industry. For traditional education enterprises, especially the best education enterprises, one wrong step is a wrong step.
This time, Xueersi broke the "old book" education enterprise personality. In today's still foggy educational hardware industry, the successful iteration of intelligent learning machines not only provides an important reference for the commercial closed-loop opening of AI technologies such as large models in the education industry, but also becomes the vanguard of the model transformation of personalized education.
When education, the oldest industry, meets the ever-changing emerging technologies, learning enters a new "renaissance". Traditional education companies such as Xueersi are also undergoing evolution and rebirth, and are doing their best to reach the other side of personalized learning and usher in a new era of "education".
There is a long, long way to go, but people are trying to find their way.