Companies Can 'Hire' a Virtual Person For About $14k a Year in China (cnbc.com) 18
From customer service to the entertainment industry, businesses in China are paying big bucks for virtual employees. From a report: Tech company Baidu said the number of virtual people projects it's worked on for clients has doubled since last year, with a wide price range of as little as $2,800 to a whopping $14,300 per year. Virtual people are a combination of animation, sound tech and machine learning that create digitized human beings who can sing and even interact on a livestream. While these digital beings have appeared on the fringes of the U.S. internet, they've been popping up more and more in China's cyberspace.
Some buyers of virtual people include financial services companies, local tourism boards and state media, said Li Shiyan, who heads Baidu's virtual people and robotics business. As the tech improves, costs have dropped by about 80% since last year, he said. It costs about 100,000 yuan ($14,300) a year for a three-dimensional virtual person, and 20,000 yuan for a two-dimensional one. Li expects the virtual person industry overall will keep growing by 50% annually through 2025.
China is pushing hard into the development of virtual people. Beijing city announced in August a plan to build up the municipal virtual people industry into one valued at more than 50 billion yuan by 2025. The municipal authorities also called for the development of one or two "leading virtual people businesses" with operating revenue of more than 5 billion yuan each. This fall, central government ministries released a detailed plan for incorporating more virtual reality -- especially in broadcasting, manufacturing and other areas. The country's latest five-year plan revealed last year included a call for more digitalization of the economy, including in virtual and augmented reality.
Some buyers of virtual people include financial services companies, local tourism boards and state media, said Li Shiyan, who heads Baidu's virtual people and robotics business. As the tech improves, costs have dropped by about 80% since last year, he said. It costs about 100,000 yuan ($14,300) a year for a three-dimensional virtual person, and 20,000 yuan for a two-dimensional one. Li expects the virtual person industry overall will keep growing by 50% annually through 2025.
China is pushing hard into the development of virtual people. Beijing city announced in August a plan to build up the municipal virtual people industry into one valued at more than 50 billion yuan by 2025. The municipal authorities also called for the development of one or two "leading virtual people businesses" with operating revenue of more than 5 billion yuan each. This fall, central government ministries released a detailed plan for incorporating more virtual reality -- especially in broadcasting, manufacturing and other areas. The country's latest five-year plan revealed last year included a call for more digitalization of the economy, including in virtual and augmented reality.
hire or rent (Score:5, Informative)
> costs about 100,000 yuan ($14,300) a year for a three-dimensional virtual person, and 20,000 yuan for a two-dimensional one
That is cost per year. I see that the robot revolution will be delayed by rent seeking.
G4 would have LOVED this! (Score:1)
Good thing this didn't exist at that point.
Let the dead stay dead...
A real one in Argentina is cheaper than that... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A real one in Argentina is cheaper than that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where can you get that, precisely? Federal minimum wage is (still) $7.25/hour, but most of the US (29 states, DC, all federal contractors, etc.) have higher rates. Your number ignores the employer side of payroll tax and all fringe benefits, so it's not accurate even in the 21 states where the federal minimum wage applies.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...and I guess in many other places. Average salary in Argentina is under 8K USD yearly.
Yeah, but a virtual person is a lot less likely to go off script than a real person.
Re: A real one in Argentina is cheaper than that.. (Score:1)
Depends on who writes the script and whether I can just shoot packets at a port I happen to know and have them repeated verbatim on national television.
Never underestimate the capacity of expensive specialized software to leave open giant yawning security holes cuz the geeks who made it were too busy geeking out on the sheer mathematical beauty of their creation to bother with authentication infrastructure.
I know I've never ever done such a thing...
Is this a job you can Zoom to? (Score:2)
You're a virtual person, after all.
Chatbot with a face (Score:2)
animation, sound tech and machine learning [...] can sing and even interact on a livestream.
People who need to worry about this particular news are those paid as furry mascots in sports games. Other than that it's just incremental improvement to the existing chatbots.
$14K? (Score:2)
Also, "virtual person"? You mean offshoring, and it's nothing new. If companies can offshore they *always* will. If you're an American and you have a job it's because they couldn't offshore you and they couldn't replace you with an H1-B yet.
Lenny is cheaper (Score:2)
Oh I Get It (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't add up (Score:3)