AlphaGo is just the beginning, artificial intelligence will usher in an explosion

The final round of the man-machine Go battle came today. After nearly 5 hours of competition, Google's Go artificial intelligence AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol with a total score of 4:1, marking the end of the man-machine Go battle with the machine. This victory of the machine over humans has successfully turned artificial intelligence from an industry topic into a public discussion. Baidu President Zhang Yaqin also expressed his views on this competition and the future application prospects of artificial intelligence. He said that artificial intelligence is the technological cornerstone of the fourth industrial revolution and will become the core outbreak stage in the next few years.

Zhang Yaqin believes that artificial intelligence is deeply penetrating into users' work and life. It may be manifested as an identity authentication mechanism (iris, body features, etc.), a UI (human-computer interface, such as Siri, Cortana), or an entertainment interaction and life service interface (such as DuerOS). Behind these services are the support of machine vision, hearing, voice, big data, deep neural network and other technologies.

Zhang Yaqin also said that intelligent services will quickly access life service areas such as catering, travel, tourism, movies, education, and medical care, covering all aspects of users' eating, living, traveling, and playing. Based on the extensive indexing of real-world information and services, relying on intelligent interactive technology, it will provide users with high-quality services, which may be comparable to full-time secretaries in the future. Unmanned vehicles are a very important manifestation of artificial intelligence in improving users' lives and travel, which will help to create a sharing economy and have a significant impact on future travel driving and the entire urban transportation infrastructure architecture.

In addition, Zhang Yaqin believes that there will be some technological breakthroughs in recent years, and said that Baidu will use the evolving artificial intelligence technology to improve various service projects, including voice recognition, text and speech, machine translation, search engines and advertising platforms. Baidu's focus is not limited to driverless cars and personal assistant interfaces. As a company with technology as its core driving force, Baidu also attaches great importance to the development of intelligent technologies in vertical service areas, in order to widely apply them to finance, medical and other fields in the future. In the financial field, such as insurance and credit, machine learning and artificial intelligence can help find patterns and reduce risks. In general, the application of artificial intelligence makes cities smarter, life simpler, and services more equal.

Zhang Yaqin also mentioned that Baidu has a high-performance technology platform that is open to all Baidu internal teams and external search personnel. Baidu has a neural network that it is happy to show and share with the world, opening up huge computing power and massive data to help small companies and startups that provide intelligent services.

The biggest victory of AlphaGo is that it has created a global popular science for artificial intelligence, and it also represents the high-tech companies' declaration of their "ambition" for artificial intelligence technology. In the past ten or twenty years, artificial intelligence has only existed in the laboratory for intelligent exploration; but in the next few decades of science and technology, artificial intelligence will be the foundation and a powerful driving force for the development of business and society.

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.