Baidu World Conference releases new products and AI technology ranks among the world's top

The 2017 Baidu World Conference was held in Beijing on November 16. This year's conference was themed "Bring AI to Life". It released a series of products including the raven series of smart hardware and Baidu Mobile 10.0, showing a clear trend of AI productization and industrialization. From R&D to ecology to commercialization, there are both cutting-edge field exploration and real-world output, forming a complete AI landscape. In the era of artificial intelligence, will the ranking of BAT change?

So TM What? No, BAT has already entered the AI ​​ranking race

Alibaba is in the e-commerce field, Tencent is in the social field, and Baidu is in the search field. After several generations of rise and fall, the Chinese Internet industry finally established an almost unshakable three-way split in the 21st century. When people thought that the popularity of mobile Internet would change this pattern, BAT quickly regained its advantage with a powerful capital + traffic offensive, accelerated the development of the entire industry, and quickly divided up the market share.

It is foreseeable that in the field of artificial intelligence, which has higher technology and resource thresholds than the Internet, BAT will still quickly lead small and medium-sized entrepreneurs as long as they make efforts. However, there are always twists and turns at the beginning. Although Baidu saw the prospect a few years ago and invested heavily and recruited talents for research and development, Tencent did not make efforts out of caution. Alibaba's Jack Ma simply uttered the swear word "So TM what" to question the AI ​​future shown by AlphaGo.

What is dramatic is that AT still had doubts in the first half of 2017, but quickly changed their minds and invested fully in the second half. Tencent set up an AI lab department and increased its investment in AI, followed Baidu into the "All in AI" stage, and Alibaba invested 100 billion yuan to set up the "Damo Academy". However, whether it is Tencent or Alibaba, their AI landscape is still in the "big picture" stage, and they are still in the early stages of research and development and exploring models. Compared with Baidu's firm steps and clear progress, Tencent and Alibaba have fallen behind by two positions.

Leading by two positions, China's BAT catalyzes the world's Baidu

"Take China's own path and surpass the research institutes of Microsoft, Intel and IBM", this is Jack Ma's expectation for the DAMO Academy, but this lofty statement just exposes his embarrassment of not understanding technology and Alibaba's lack of technical genes. Technology has no borders, and artificial intelligence needs an international perspective and down-to-earth efforts, rather than narrow-minded nationalism. In the early stages of R&D, the usual sales rhetoric used to arouse emotions usually only brings troubles to technology developers and interferes with the normal laws of scientific development.

Guided by the company's sales culture, Alibaba's technology has not yet arrived, but its products are very active. For example, unmanned supermarkets and smart speakers have been launched. However, the results are mostly empty talk, and it is difficult for consumers to pass the actual application test. The immature product development has instead formed a game of company resources with technological research and development.

On the contrary, although Tencent has not yet built a solid AI foundation, it is more pragmatic and respects the laws of AI business development. When it lacks relevant experience, it follows Baidu's footsteps and starts from imitation. For example, the AI ​​strategy recently released has layouts in technology, scenarios, and platform layers. Internet of Vehicles, cloud computing, and smart retail are also promoting the development of open platforms. Basic technology research in the four fields of machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing is already proceeding step by step. Although the ecosystem lacks basic capability support and the product has not yet entered the practical stage, it has already been done in a good way.

Baidu's AI advantages are more prominent in the context of AT. Based on its R&D foundation, Baidu was ranked as one of the top four AI companies in the world by Fortune magazine. It has all-round skills in many fields such as face/voice recognition, natural language understanding, machine learning, and unmanned driving, and has outstanding comprehensive strength.

raven H

In terms of ecosystem, Baidu has built the world's first open autonomous driving platform Apollo and an open intelligent voice platform DuerOS. With strong technical output, the two platforms have attracted the world's top companies in their respective fields. In terms of product research and development, after reaching a cooperation with King Long Bus, it has been determined that commercial driverless buses will be mass-produced in 2018. Raven Technology has also released smart home products that incorporate Baidu AI. From travel to home, the two most promising and high-threshold areas of artificial intelligence have been broken, which will bring greater changes to people's lives.

In general, the development environment of Chinese Internet companies is unique, which has led to the continued prosperity of BAT. However, the competition among each other in the presence of abundant resources has also catalyzed the continuous evolution of Chinese Internet companies. Baidu fell behind in the mobile Internet era, but has surpassed it in the era of artificial intelligence. Alibaba and Tencent are already two positions behind Baidu. When they were just starting their AI journey and were still focusing on breaking out of China, Baidu had already firmly established itself as one of the world's top AI companies.

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.