Baidu artificial intelligence team expanded to 1,300 people this year and added hundreds more

China is famous for its cottages, whether it is luxury brand bags or internet startups. However, national leaders know that in the field of artificial intelligence, it is not possible to make a copycat, especially if the opponents include Alphabet, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. In February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission appointed Baidu to lead the establishment of deep learning technology and the application of national engineering laboratories, marking the Chinese government’s belief that Baidu has become a “national team” in the field of artificial intelligence.

At the unveiling ceremony for deep learning technology and the application of the National Engineering Laboratory last month, Baidu’s CEO Li Yanhong stated that Baidu’s R&D expenditure exceeded 20 billion yuan in the past two and a half years, and most of them invested in artificial intelligence. However, national interest is only one of his motives: Last year, Baidu’s revenue growth rate narrowed to approximately 6% over 30% (average) in the first three years, accounting for the vast majority of Baidu’s revenue in search advertising. Faced with "encirclement and suppression" from local competitors. Market research company Emarketer issued a report in September last year that Alibaba has surpassed Baidu as the leader in China's digital advertising market. Baidu hopes that artificial intelligence technology can help it regain lost ground in the search market and ensure success in new business areas.

This is important because Baidu’s business diversification attempt is not easy. In the 12 months before the end of February of this year, Baidu’s group-buying site Baidu’s daily average traffic dropped by 59%. According to Natalie Wu, an analyst at China International Finance Corporation, take-out ordering service Baidu takes third place. Huaxing Capital analyst Ella Ji estimates that although iQiyi is very popular, this year's expenditure on content will reach 12 billion yuan.

The unsuccessful development of these services means that Baidu's advancement into the field of artificial intelligence is of greater significance. Li Yanhong said in an interview on March 10th, “The mobile internet era is over. We will actively invest in artificial intelligence. I think this technology will benefit the public and change one industry.”

In January of this year, Baidu appointed former Microsoft executive Lu Qi as its chief operating officer. His responsibilities are to restructure the company's business around technologies such as deep learning, augmented reality, and image recognition. Lu Qi will co-manage the artificial intelligence business with Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng. Under the leadership of Wu Enda, the Baidu artificial intelligence team has expanded to 1300 people and is expected to add hundreds more this year.

Zhao Shiqi, deputy head of Baidu's natural language processing department, recalls that when he studied computer translation at Harbin Institute of Technology, he had only 2 million English-Chinese word pairs available for use. Baidu has about 100 million words, but it is still far below the 500 million for Alphabet.

In order to make up for the gap with Alphabet, Baidu appealed to an ancient strategy: human tactics. Nowadays, Baidu sponsors all kinds of translation activities all year long and provides players with prizes such as smart phones and water purifiers. The collected data helps to strengthen the performance of Baidu's translation engine and promote the development of Deep Speech speech recognition system.

The software developed by the Baidu Sunnyvale team was applied to the TalkType input method released in July 2016 - supporting voice input. This technology is also used in voice assistants and other products. Machine learning technology in Deep Speech helps Baidu to promote other products "intelligence." For example, it is the secret weapon of the small fish home robot displayed by Baidu during the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Numerous Internet products have enabled Baidu to obtain massive information about Chinese consumers, at least in theory, which has given it an advantage in building artificial intelligence products for Chinese consumers. With Baidu Demi and Baidu take-out, Baidu has an in-depth understanding of the Chinese family's shopping and dining, and Ctrip.com reveals where Chinese families go on holiday. Every month, 665 million smart phone users use Baidu mobile portals and applications, and 341 million users use Baidu maps. Chi Tsang, an analyst at HSBC, said that artificial intelligence is a product that is wrong and it is the basis of the product. ”

The new artificial intelligence products have not yet significantly boosted Baidu’s profits. However, artificial intelligence technology has helped it gain dominance in existing business areas and explore new businesses such as cloud computing and self-driving cars. Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, said, "In the next 3-5 years, all these businesses may have given birth to another Baidu." He refers to Baidu's market value of RMB 414.6 billion. "Now we need to bet."

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