2017 Baidu World Conference: AI Ecosystem Finally Closed

On November 16, the 2017 Baidu World Conference was held in Beijing. Baidu released hardware products including the Raven smart speaker and announced that driverless cars will be mass-produced in 2018. As the theme of this conference, "Bring AI to Life", said, with the productization of Baidu AI, the encounter between humans and artificial intelligence will no longer be technology news, but will become a daily routine.

From investing huge amounts of money in research and development, recruiting many world-class top AI scientists, to the current fruition of its products, Baidu has finally formed a complete AI ecological closed loop after years of hard work. Every piece of the map has solid results, and every step forward is the result of natural evolution.

Baidu AI Ecosystem

Baidu's AI open platform is in a basic position. In addition to the autonomous driving open platform Apollo and the intelligent voice open platform DuerOS that have been frequently mentioned this year, underlying technology open platforms such as the deep learning open source platform PaddlePaddle and Baidu Brain are also promoting the development of Baidu and even China's artificial intelligence industry.

Just like a mountain, if the top of the mountain wants to penetrate the clouds, the base of the mountain must be large and thick enough. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at the foot of Mount Everest starts at an average altitude of 4,000 meters. Baidu AI's underlying technology open platform is like the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which is the result of Baidu's continuous technological innovation and rich core technology achievements. Baidu Brain includes large-scale neural networks, trillions of parameters, hundreds of billions of samples and hundreds of billions of feature training. Baidu AI has outstanding comprehensive technical strength in many fields such as image recognition, machine learning, face recognition, and natural language understanding. PaddlePaddle is the first open source deep learning platform in China, and Apollo is the world's first open platform for autonomous driving. Baidu has set a very high benchmark in the underlying technology platform.

The second layer is Baidu AI partners. Artificial intelligence is a systematic project, and it can even be said to be a reconstruction of the lifestyle of human society, which requires the participation of more industry chain companies. With Baidu's leading position in the field of artificial intelligence, it has attracted many top companies to join and create the future of AI together.

The first batch of Apollo Ecological Cooperation Alliance attracted Chery, FAW, Changan, Bosch, Continental, Microsoft, Tsinghua University, and even local government departments to join. The list continues to expand, forming a true industry-university-research integration ecosystem. King Long and JAC have already started product-level cooperation. DuerOS has become a guest of honor for many companies, including HTC, Haier, Midea, XGIMI TV, CITIC Guoan Broadcasting, etc., to expand the industry ecosystem.

The third layer is the application. Unlike the Internet, which is mainly aimed at the user market, artificial intelligence also has important application value in public services, industry and other industries. For example, after reaching a strategic cooperation with Capital Airport, people can "scan their faces to take a plane" in the future. This is the application of Baidu's facial recognition technology. The comprehensive cooperation in the fields of airport smart operation, smart security, smart services, smart business and management, and information technology capacity building will enable Capital Airport to upgrade comprehensively.

Xiongan New Area attaches great importance to Baidu. Chen Gang, director of the Xiongan New Area Management Committee, said frankly: "Baidu Group has a leading advantage in smart city construction, big data, and autonomous driving. We welcome Baidu to set up an open, international, national artificial intelligence laboratory and high-end application research institutions in Xiongan New Area, especially to build a demonstration zone for the high-tech industry of autonomous driving." Baidu AI has been deeply involved in the city's planning stage.

Ultimately, leading technology must be exported through products. The 2017 Baidu World Conference gave a surprise. The unmanned vehicle, which was originally expected to be mass-produced in 2020, was announced to be advanced to 2018 after Baidu and King Long cooperated. That means everyone will be able to ride in a mass-produced unmanned bus next year.

Duer also became the focus of the 2017 Baidu World Conference, launching three smart speaker products equipped with Duer OS. As entry-level hardware for smart home scenarios, most of the previous domestic products were aimed at the low-end market, while this time Duer brought a high-end masterpiece to the Chinese smart speaker market, which is also a concentrated product output of Baidu's AI capabilities.

Among the partners, HTC's latest flagship phone U11, which is expected to be a revival, the XGIMI screenless TV Z5, the DOSS Xiaodu version smart speaker, the Midea refrigerator 539, the Haier Xinchu refrigerator and other products are all using the Duer OS system. A huge home ecosystem that can interact with each other is taking shape.

As the last hurdle of Baidu's AI ecosystem, the mass production of commercial products means that Baidu has completed the top-level closed loop. Technology output becomes a consumer product that can be cashed in, and the revenue of the product can test the technological achievements and feed back to technological research and development. The 2017 Baidu World Conference drew an exclamation mark for Baidu AI. History is still being written, but it has come to a turning point. The full formation of Baidu's AI ecosystem will be the beginning of artificial intelligence entering human life. The future has come, and change starts now.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.