Duan Yitao, Chief Scientist of NetEase Youdao: Rooting AI Technology in Business Scenarios

On June 12th, at the 8th Zhiyuan Conference, over 40 AI company CEOs, founders, chief scientists, and multiple Turing Award winners gathered in Beijing to focus on the development direction of artificial intelligence technology. Duan Yitao, Chief Scientist of NetEase Youdao, delivered a keynote speech titled "Product Thinking and Practice under the AI-Native Strategy," sharing Youdao's latest achievements and prospects in the AI learning field, drawing on NetEase Youdao's deep experience in AI learning.

NetEase Youdao Chief Scientist Duan Yitao delivering a speech

Duan Yitao first pointed out that learning involves two levels: acquiring knowledge and turning that knowledge into one's own ability. The development of the internet and information technology has readily solved the first problem, while generative AI provides an opportunity for a substantive breakthrough in the second. Based on this insight, Youdao recognized deeply in 2023: "Large models should be treated as an LPU, not a complete solution." They need to be combined with a series of surrounding information, data, components, business logic, etc., to organically integrate business and AI, forming a truly valuable solution.

Consequently, NetEase Youdao launched the country's first vertical large model for the education field, "Ziyue," in July 2023. Using this as a foundation, Youdao has continuously launched various applications targeting specific scenarios such as translation, homework correction, grammar explanation, and speaking practice, gradually penetrating the entire learning process in schools and families, forming a complete solution from learning assistance to personalized guidance. Duan Yitao emphasized in his speech that Youdao's technology strategy is to use a Harness that effectively carries business cognition, combined with low-cost domain models to build products.

Through innovative training methods, significantly reducing training and inference costs, the continuously iterating "Ziyue" is even more adept in learning scenarios. Recently, the "Ziyue" large model underwent a major upgrade to version 4.0, entering the era of full modality that fully supports text, image, and audio fusion interaction. Simultaneously, Youdao announced the official open-sourcing of its core "Multimodal Model" and "Text-to-Speech (TTS) Model." Duan Yitao revealed that Youdao's "Ziyue 4.0" scored a high 145 points in this year's simulated college entrance exam (Gaokao) math test, while its open-source TTS model achieved cross-lingual accent-free cloning. It is precisely these breakthroughs that fully demonstrate that low-cost technology can also create high-quality learning services.

At the implementation methodology level, Duan Yitao emphasized that technology must serve clear business scenarios while relying on products to continuously collect data and feedback, enabling efficient business iteration. Taking "AI Essay Grading" as an example, he noted that while many general large models can perform basic essay grading, the scoring results struggle to align with the formal grading standards of the Gaokao, and the explanations cannot match the scoring logic of examiners. Youdao adopts an Agent approach to integrate data such as master teachers' grading ideas and judgment logic into the technical framework, thus making the scores given by the AI very close to those given by real teachers. Additionally, the native Agent products "Youdao Treasure Trove" and "LobsterAI (Youdao Lobster)" have garnered significant attention from the market and developers for their features of deep content generation and all-scenario AI assistance, respectively.

Finally, Duan Yitao stated that Youdao will continue to leverage the value of AI based on business accumulation, using cost-effective technological innovation to help optimize and upgrade learning models, providing users with a more high-quality and efficient learning experience.

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