After successfully building Baidu into China's largest search platform, Robin Li has become China's star, but even so, Robin Li still did not expect the attention he was attracted actually far exceeded his original expectations.Auto-driving cars are now in China And can not legally get on the road, but Robin Li once inadvertently broadcast a video of 'unmanned vehicle violation' incident.
Precisely because of this, Robin Li's ride to Baidu Apollo self-driving video quickly became a hot search on the Internet. 'I did not expect to receive so much attention because having a fully automated driving car is not exactly Allowed. "Robin Li stressed.
More than three months have passed since Baidu's headquarters in Beijing's Haidian District reviewed the scene and Robin Li can now laugh at it.Baddy's old headquarters building is a seven-storey building about 15 from the new headquarters today Minute drive (according to Beijing traffic standards), while the new headquarters building is not only bigger in size but also uses face recognition technology to replace past employee card certification - even buying green tea from vending machines can pass' Face 'done - which can not help but let Baidu full of futuristic, can be considered a super-computing power of the company a' glimpse of 'it.
This year marks the 18th anniversary of Baidu.Although the company has now become the largest search platform in China, it has become a company that is destined to become one of the strongest technology companies in China even if it no longer develops other businesses. However, Baidu Is experiencing the most vulnerable moment in history.China in 2017, want to continue to do a good job in the search business is not easy because today's Chinese are making heavy use of mobile applications to complete the online demand.Weixin and Alibaba is the most Successful transition case, Baidu had unfortunately missed a good opportunity.It is from that time, the company gradually struggled to get the future leadership, at this time of Baidu urgent need to find new growth point, and quickly achieved.
Fortunately, with the promotion of the whole world, the opportunity came - "The Age of Artificial Intelligence," said Robin Li, Baidu's future under the leadership of Robin Li will be closely tied with AI, Baidu tried to be in Asia or even The world led an AI revolution.
To date, North American companies have maintained their lead in investing in the AI sector, so new technologies or products are among the first to be proposed by these companies.A large number of advanced thinking AI researchers currently reside in Silicon Valley or Canada and include sites like Google Home and Artificial intelligence products such as Amazon Echo are always first produced and released by major technology companies in the United States.
However, Robin Li, as a rising star from Asia, if not optimistic, there are plenty of reasons to believe - Baidu is an advantage.
Today's humanity does not know how AI will change our lives, but one thing is quite certain: the change is coming to us, and a well-prepared business will be responsible for delivering that change, And at the same time reap the inevitable returns as a result of the change.Baidu is a company with this technical ability.As with the top five technology companies in the United States, Baidu has supercomputing power, including an AI integrated service ' Baidu brain, "and DuerOS, a voice assistant platform." We are one of the few companies with the ability to develop this technology, "said Li.
Baidu also has another advantage of location and time.Li Yanhong said that Baidu's soil is a culture without moral and moral constraints to the development of AI soil.Is not like Western society, people hold the bias and fear of the algorithm, that This will break the traditional value, affect employment, etc., which make the promotion of new technologies become slow.In China, everything is the opposite: the pressure of society is to hope that enterprises develop faster and better.In July this year, the Chinese government and even A plan was also enacted to make it the world leader in AI development by 2030.
There are also the most important foundations for improving the algorithm: Data. The number of netizens in China is close to 731 million, which is more than double the number of Internet users in the US When all these people are searching, watching videos and paying online, billions of dollars The digital information is sufficient for any AI research institute to covet.
All of the above all indicate that China is becoming a hotbed of AI development.Li Yanhong also believes that Baidu has been walking on the right track to embrace the next revolution.When the AI era, Baidu will own Artificial Intelligence Into systems ranging from health care to entertainment to cars, 'in human history humans first invented the tools and then learned to use them,' said Robin Lih, 'and in the future devices will learn about humans.'
AI revolution is a battle that can not be mistaken for Robin Lee, after all, he had missed an opportunity for the mobile Internet.
In China, people always talk about the BAT Big Three's outstanding influence on the technology industry. BAT respectively refers to the Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent .Li Yanhong flew back to China after a short trip to the United States founded Baidu .He spent in New York State University Buffalo received a master's degree in computer science and subsequently served as a technical engineer for two years at Infoseek, a search engine company in the United States and later acquired by HP. After returning home, Robin Li founded Baidu with co-founder Xu Yong, After the company became the largest search engine in China, Baidu completed its listing in the United States in 2005.
On the face of it, Baidu's history seems to be a glorious success story, but in the past few years, while Tencent and Alibaba have been actively growing, Baidu has encountered unprecedented growth dilemmas - among them The reason also had to start with a huge transition error.When China's Internet users are increasingly using mobile phones to access the Internet, Alibaba, Tencent and even other technology companies have already introduced mobile products such as WeChat Only Baidu still guarding the desktop market.
The company did not complete the transition from desktop to mobile as early as possible, causing WeChat to seize the opportunity and gradually improve its functions from the shopping to booking the full coverage of air tickets, thus allowing users to rely on the formation of Baidu missed the opportunity to occupy the mobile era.
'In the mobile age, we have nothing to work harder,' says Robin Li, Web search once brought a positive loop to Baidu: the more people use it, the more data it collects and the more it serves The quality is better, but when people no longer use the search, the advantage will soon disappear.'No matter you master the best technology, if you do not have the data, everything is on the go, 'Li said.
In order to make up for the mistake, Baidu later hoisted tens of billions of dollars to develop e-commerce business such as take-out and online shopping mall, but it eventually faded out because consumers did not buy it. In 2016, an advertising storm pushed Baidu to the crisis At the forefront of this, Chinese regulators tightened the regulatory enforcement of pharmaceutical advertising sharply, which has been one of Baidu's most important revenue sources.
Baidu at the end of 2016, an urgent need for a change not only requires a visionary new leadership, but also need a courageous leader can lead Baidu use technology to open up a new battlefield at this time of Li Yanhong thought Old friend Lu Qi.
In the industry of engineers, Lu Qi is absolutely a star, which is just like Madonna, in the field of expertise, only its name (English 'Qi') can represent their own people as a highly logical thinking computer scientist Lu Odd professional history basically reflects the birth and evolution of the entire Internet.
At Microsoft, Luki is the senior deputy to Nadella, the CEO responsible for leading the company's AI strategic planning and has earned the respect of the industry's most respected practitioners, including Joshua, a professor of computer science in Canada Yoshua Bengio, who agreed at the invitation of Luki to provide consulting assistance to Microsoft, and Luki also focused on nurturing young talent. Jesse Lyu ended in 2015 at YCombinator Incubator project, he then sent an e-mail to Luki, who had only one occasion with Demo Day, to send his e-mail to ask his advice.I did not expect Luki to immediately invite Jessie to meet at Sunnyvale's office in Silicon Valley after receiving the e-mail
Luki, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, has now secured more than 40 patents, and since the Yahoo era of the 1990s, Luki has been search-related for decades Lu Qi and Robin Li met about 20 years ago, when they are working in Silicon Valley. 'In the past 10 to 15 years, we have maintained regular meetings and exchanged some views.' Li said, 'I talked Some of what I saw in China, he talked about some of the technical developments he saw in big companies like Microsoft.
Last fall, when Lu Qi left Microsoft for a recovery injury, Robin Li saw the opportunity to quickly recruit Lu Qi to Baidu, and Lu Qi also said that at that point in time was just right to develop AI in the Chinese market - Opportunities can be described as good not to be missed: massive amounts of raw data, support from the government, expectations from the general public, and a large pool of talent, all echoed by tech leaders across China, and business leaders were given Came from the government's pressure and support for their prompt action.
For example, I (reporter) recently had dialogue with well-known venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee, and he made it clear that the Chinese government is trying hard to support the financial development of AI. "Even those small cities have planned a $ 100 million grant program." Kai-fu Lee said, 'If you are an AI company, you want to expand development, you tell the government directly how much you want on it.'
In most cases, the general public supports the vigorous development of AI as well, and I asked Roh's Chinese entrepreneurs whether they would worry about the possible unintended consequences of the development of AI, but said: 'The government is more concerned with labor My opinion is consistent with that of the government in this regard. "In Robin Li's opinion, AI is not much different from other new technologies. He contrasts with the development of e-commerce, emphasizing that in one People started to worry about having their credit card information on the Internet, etc. 'Things are constantly changing and you have to adapt to it, and humans always find the right way to deal with potential threats,' said Robin Li.
This atmosphere is a huge temptation for Lu Qi, so he flew to Beijing in January this year as Baidu's vice chairman and chief operating officer (COO) .Li Yanhong retreated behind the scenes, leaving only to grasp the strategic direction of Baidu , Lu Qi is in charge of the daily operation of the company.Li Yanhong and Lu Qi meet once every two weeks and exchange views.These important conversations will determine the future of Baidu.
In fact, Lu Qi joined the company is a company that has invested a lot of resources into the field of AI or deep learning, and lasted more than six years of the company.In 2014, Baidu had a high profile hired gifted AI scientist Ng Nuda (Andrew Ng ) Is the company's chief scientist in charge of Baidu's new R & D center in Silicon Valley. Ng to rely on personal prestige to attract scientists from around the world. Under his leadership, Baidu successfully developed DuerOS and Baidu brain strategy and completed The earliest prototype of Baidu's self-driving car technology, Lu Qi, who has just taken over, will obviously continue to improve and promote the efforts left by Wu En.
Baidu may face the biggest challenge is the focus of the problem.Currently many companies to carry out business, for example, only the car division is divided into three months Lu Qi has been reorganizing a few months after taking office, the company now has two priority strategies: one Is to strengthen the core business at the same time gradually penetrate the mobile terminal, the other is to transform the core business to AI and become a leader.
To this end, Luki closed the mobile healthcare sector but at the same time expanded the capital base of Baidu Ventures, which merged multiple departments into one and reported directly to Luki. "I (and also) is responsible for research and development, sales and Marketing because I want to make sure our overall strategy is exactly the same. "Lu Qi disclosed in an interview with me this summer.
Earlier this year, Robin Li had asked Lu Qi how he looked at the issue of opening Baidu's autonomous driving technology to the outside world. In essence, this opening up was actually done by providing a car manufacturer with a car's brain in exchange for car data, This helps to train Baidu's algorithm. "Robin Li said: (Lu Qi) After due diligence, he told me later: 'This is a good idea and we should do that.'" So, the Apollo Project So born.
Baidu World Congress the same day, Beijing did not appear past the haze, but with a clear blue sky. Can see a large number of people standing on both sides of the road outside the Convention Center and look forward to a glimpse of Baidu's most ambitious science and technology projects. Not far from a parking lot, there is a similar height and height similar to pods of minibus car.The car was surrounded by red rope surrounded by security personnel to maintain order to prevent onlookers close too.The bus Is one of the first self-driving vehicles that will use the Apollo system and will soon be commercialized in China. It is jointly manufactured by Golden Dragon Bus and Baidu and is expected to launch short-range passenger service as early as next year.
Robin Li said Baidu will be mass-producing semi-autonomous vehicles by 2019. Such vehicles will have most of the features of autonomous vehicles, but still require human drivers to interact, and by 2021, fully autonomous vehicles will Into the full production stage.
As a free software platform for everyone open, Apollo is Baidu's largest gamble ever, is also the most important science and technology projects.Li Qi even said he will spend more than 40% of the time for this purpose.Welcome to Google Google Successfully engraved into the field of autonomous vehicles, hoping to create a successful environment for everyone by creating a suitable environment.The Apollo platform in addition to the core software, but also includes several cloud-based services, The hardware components of autonomous vehicles include GPS, camera, light radar and radar.
If the strategy finally succeeds, Baidu will overtake corners and catch up with veteran technology companies that have been around for years in the field, such as Waymo, the alphabet company, which has been in operation since 2009.
From the very beginning, creating an open environment for all developers was not easy because Baidu, which already had the backing of several corporate partners and now has an open platform, worried that existing partners would join later in the future However, after making personal contacts with partners, he found out that everyone was open-minded because an open platform would allow Baidu's technology to improve more quickly. 'We saw a lot of signals that other companies did not see and we were able to provide them with those signals,' said Robin Li.
Baidu also has another, more difficult-to-handle concern. "Inside, the code is not very lean," says Robin Li. "If you open the code through Apollo, people may complain that engineers are not doing a good job. The code is expected to take months, and Baidu's engineers are beginning to feel the pace of progress lagging now, but the decision to open or immediately, Li Yanhong think, because it can help them benefit in the long term. So, engineers work overtime Apollo made preparations for release in July this year.
An open ecosystem, which is extremely clever in China with more than 200 automakers.Not like the US car maker Ford or General Motors, strategically, China's car manufacturers who are not A good partner choice.Now, anyone can download software and start producing their own self-driving cars.In terms of Chery, the company is located in Wuhu City, an autonomous driving test city in China. Although the company has 3,500 engineers, But no one has the ability to develop autonomous driving technology, so choose to cooperate with Baidu is the most sensible answer. 'They are, after all, a leading player in the field.' 'Chery smart car technology center executive director Huang Yong said.
In less than half a year since Baidu announced the Apollo project, more than 70 companies have already registered as partners in the project, including some international manufacturers such as Ford and NVIDIA, etc. As Android free system eventually gives Google Like more advertising revenue, Robin Li, of course, also looks forward to Apollo can help Baidu make more money.In the beginning, Robin Li's plan is to allow companies to buy more services, including maps or simulation experiments and other products After Baidu discovered enough data through Apollo, the future business opportunities can be described as limitless, or I am afraid that only the senior executives' imagination will limit the opportunities for making money.
To achieve Apollo and other programs, Baidu is the most needed engineers is now, just as American companies have long realized, want to retain the talented people is extremely difficult to do .For example, in the past three years, Baidu to attract An AI superstar who is in charge of his AI team - graduated from Stanford University Wu Nanda, is also one of the co-founders of the Google brains. But Lu Qi joined Baidu in a few months after Wu Nanda resigned on the grounds Going after other dreams that have not yet been completed, Ng has posted an online course on AI online, and there have been reports that Mr. Ng has embarked on a new round of entrepreneurial projects.
Instead of Ng Nanda is a Chinese engineer named Wang Haifeng. Wang Haifeng resides in Beijing, rather than Sunnyvale .Wu Haoda academic super star and distinguished speaker origin, Wang Haifeng is a strong, pragmatic engineer style. 'He will The work is completed and implemented. 'Kai-fu Lee described this way.
Wang Haifeng's appointment also reflects a major shift in China now that Chinese companies had to dig in from AI technology researchers in North Korea in the past, but the phenomenon is changing. "The gap between China and the United States is shrinking dramatically. It is important to note that the North American market is still significant (Baidu also opened an office in Seattle after the acquisition of Kitt.ai, a small start-up this summer.) But more and more engineers are going to be homegrown and Luci says .
Evidence of Lu Qi's assertion can prove ubiquitous at the Baidu World Congress, where Baidu's Wang Haifeng and other engineers are scheduled to be on stage in the afternoon for lectures, while developers awaiting the morning keynote speech have eagerly squeezed Outside the hall corridor, hands-on notes with each other.It is reported that Baidu will release a brand new hardware products, an engineer revealed to reporters, and he heard the news is a smart speaker. As far as I can see and feel Now, these developers have a future full of imagination. Baidu is bound to persuade the most talented people, and let him know: Baidu is the most interesting issues facing the problem, and the probability of success is the largest of.
Steve Jobs's most anticipated release of the phrase is the phrase: 'There is one thing.' This will make people feel that product waiting for a long time, as a casual idea after the fact that in the past iPod, iPhone, and MacBook are so released.Yu Cheng Baidu young product manager also learned to announce two products: a toy dog robot and an orange robot can dance with the music.
However, journalists, developers and analysts sitting on the stage, or are not fans of Jobs, or because of the brief introduction of personal work in front of a little out of focus in the Lv Cheng said there are two surprises when the product and Not excited, but in any case, Baidu's products are still considered cool, though not yet a iPhone-rated masterpiece.
Back to the global topic of AI technology competition, leading the AI technology revolution is not the best speaker to sell a release, or the first to introduce self-driving car is equivalent to winning the leading market position, if so, Nokia should be today Baidu also does not need a surprise than Jobs to achieve ambition even if Baidu robot did not capture the presence of the audience's heart, Robin Li believes and overweight in the future.
The future of Baidu should not be synonymous with a series of products, but rather should become a power engine driving everything behind - an engine to help Baidu regain the dominance of the Chinese market, and even become the engine of the world leader.