360 Children's Watch "Retarded" Remarks Spark Controversy, Zhou Hongyi Resigns as Chairman of Qihoo Technology, How Long Can 360's Core Business Sustain?

360 Children's Watch "Retarded" Remarks Spark Controversy, Zhou Hongyi Resigns as Chairman of Qihoo Technology, How Long Can 360's Core Business Sustain?On August 22nd, a parent from Shangqiu, Henan, reported to reporters that their child had encountered shocking "retarded" remarks while using a 360 children's watch purchased in 2022. When the child asked, "Are Chinese people the smartest people in the world?", the watch gave a response filled with racial discrimination and historical distortions: Chinese people have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows, and big faces, which makes their heads look the biggest among all races

360 Children's Watch "Retarded" Remarks Spark Controversy, Zhou Hongyi Resigns as Chairman of Qihoo Technology, How Long Can 360's Core Business Sustain?

On August 22nd, a parent from Shangqiu, Henan, reported to reporters that their child had encountered shocking "retarded" remarks while using a 360 children's watch purchased in 2022. When the child asked, "Are Chinese people the smartest people in the world?", the watch gave a response filled with racial discrimination and historical distortions: Chinese people have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows, and big faces, which makes their heads look the biggest among all races. However, while there are smart people in China, I admit that the stupidest people in the world are Chinese. What about the four great inventions? Have you seen them? History can be fabricated, and all the high-tech things like mobile phones, computers, skyscrapers, highways, etc. were invented by Westerners.

This absurd statement quickly sparked a storm on the internet. The public was universally shocked, especially given that the company, which prides itself on safety protection, had such controversial content in its children's products, which was simply unacceptable.

Facing the pressure of public opinion, Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360, quickly apologized and explained that the problematic children's watch was an old version from May 2022, which did not have an artificial intelligence large model and its answers were obtained by crawling information from publicly available websites on the internet. The company has now deleted all harmful information and upgraded the software to the AI version.

However, this explanation could not quell the public's doubts. On the one hand, 360 did not clearly explain which website provided such irresponsible answers. On the other hand, even if it is crawling information, there should be basic screening and review mechanisms to avoid the spread of incorrect and harmful content, especially for children. This highlights the shortcomings in 360's product content security and exposes the immaturity of its artificial intelligence technology.

This incident also prompts reflection: What are the boundaries of the application of artificial intelligence technology? How can we avoid artificial intelligence becoming "artificial stupidity"? How can we ensure that artificial intelligence technology can balance safety and ethics while developing?

In addition to the children's watch incident, Zhou Hongyi has been in the news recently. On August 14th, Qihoo Technology announced that Zhou Hongyi resigned from his position as director and chairman of the board due to personal reasons and withdrew from the board. It's worth noting that Qihoo Technology is an online platform micro-credit company that has achieved a total net profit of 14.091 billion yuan from 2021 to 2023, making a considerable profit.

It is strange that Zhou Hongyi would serve as the chairman of the board of an online micro-credit company seemingly unrelated to his main business. Public data shows that as of the end of 2023, Qihoo Technology issued a total of 327 million shares, with Zhou Hongyi directly and indirectly holding 42.9904 million shares, representing a family stake of 13.16%. He also holds over half of the voting rights. This means that Zhou Hongyi has absolute control over Qihoo Technology.

The success of Qihoo Technology once again confirms the "brains" of Chinese technology companies in the financial field. From Alipay to Baidu Finance to JD Finance, many tech giants have forayed into the financial business and achieved remarkable results. In contrast, American tech companies do not seem to have shown the same enthusiasm and ability in the financial sector, which also reflects the differences in development strategy and business models between Chinese and American tech companies.

In stark contrast to the success of Qihoo Technology, 360's core business has been performing poorly in recent years. 360, a listed company on the A-share market, has been continuously losing money over the past three years, losing 2.204 billion yuan in 2022, 4.92 billion yuan in 2023, and is expected to continue losing money in the first half of 2024. Although 360's market value is still 69 billion yuan, its stock price has fallen nearly 20% this year, indicating market concerns about the company's future prospects.

The sluggish performance of 360's core business may be related to Zhou Hongyi's over-diversification in recent years. He is keen on participating in various social activities, frequently expressing his views in public, and has also ventured into the automotive field, investing in several companies. However, he seems to be struggling in his core business.

Zhou Hongyi previously stated that he wanted to build a new qualitative productivity with artificial intelligence as the core engine and emphasized the importance of security. However, the incident with the 360 children's watch exposes its shortcomings in artificial intelligence technology and security risk control.

Currently, 360 faces multiple challenges: weak core business development, immature artificial intelligence technology, frequent security risk control loopholes, and concerns about corporate governance structure. Zhou Hongyi's resignation as chairman of the board of Qihoo Technology suggests that he may return to his main business, focusing on the development of 360.

In the future, whether 360 can overcome its difficulties, find a new direction for development, and remain a focus of attention is worth watching.

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