Exploiting Information Asymmetry: Profiteering from Quark Volunteer Reports on Secondhand Platforms

As high school graduates across the country receive their exam results, the daunting task of choosing a college looms large. And as with any high-stakes situation, opportunities for exploiting anxieties arise. CNBC AI News has learned that reports are surfacing of unscrupulous vendors on used-goods platforms repackaging free services as premium offerings.

Specifically, these vendors are reportedly taking the college application reports generated by Quake’s AI, and falsely presenting them as “expert-crafted” packages, charging hundreds of dollars for the information. Numerous parents have already fallen prey to this deceptive practice.

Quake, for its part, has a long-standing commitment to providing complimentary college application guidance. Over the past seven years, they’ve offered professional services to over 120 million students and parents, free of charge.

This year, Quake introduced its “College Application Report” module, allowing students to generate personalized reports at no cost. This free availability, however, has paradoxically created an opening for these opportunistic vendors to capitalize on the information gap.

Behind the scenes, Quake utilizes a comprehensive, domestically-pioneering college application large language model. This model integrates three critical functionalities: highly-tuned search capabilities, report generation, and intelligent college recommendations.

The “College Application Report” feature, in particular, simulates the decision-making process of college counselors, producing a complete report encompassing application strategies, recommended college lists, and optimized application forms. This full-report generation is a unique capability in the market – all powered by advanced AI.

It’s a computationally intensive process. Generating a report typically requires a hefty time investment, ranging from 5 to 10 minutes, and is supported by immense computing power.

Yesterday, users reported experiencing significant wait times when attempting to generate reports through Quake, with some queues exceeding 10,000 people.

Acknowledging the robust demand, Vice President of Alibaba Group, issued a statement, revealing that at 3:15 PM yesterday, the Quake system had already generated over 3 million application reports.