Baidu President Zhang Yaqin: Artificial intelligence has entered a core stage of development

"A month ago, my wife and I drove from Seattle to Vancouver. About an hour or two after we set off, we received a call from the property management company saying that our home had been illegally broken into." At the Davos Artificial Intelligence Forum, Baidu President Zhang Yaqin shared a story about being "illegally broken into" by a smart vacuum cleaner: Zhang Yaqin's vacuum cleaner started automatically and cleaned the house, scaring the property management company into thinking someone had broken in. "As machines become more and more automated, more and more smart robots will appear in ordinary people's homes."

Artificial intelligence enters the core stage of development, Baidu is willing to share with the world

Baidu has been investing heavily in the field of artificial intelligence and has set up an artificial intelligence research center in Silicon Valley. In Zhang Yaqin's view, artificial intelligence has gradually become mainstream in the past few years and has entered a core stage of development. "At Baidu, artificial intelligence, as a basic technology, is reflected in every aspect of the products and services we provide, including speech recognition, text recognition, machine translation, and autonomous driving technology. The information technology platform we have built for various project teams within Baidu is actually accessible to researchers around the world."

More than a decade ago, artificial intelligence technology only appeared in laboratories. Although it is gradually entering people's lives, its research still requires strong hard resources, including powerful computing power and big data, which can only be provided by some large companies. Zhang Yaqin said: "Baidu also has the world's largest deep neural network, and we are happy to share it with the world."

Artificial intelligence must be reliable and controllable. Weak artificial intelligence is an amplification of human intelligence.

The relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence has always been a controversial topic. Zhang Yaqin believes: "Strong artificial intelligence will surpass the development of human intelligence. Obviously, this is a question of legitimacy, but we need to ensure that artificial intelligence is reliable and controllable. In the short term, obviously from the perspective of industrial development, we are investing in weak artificial intelligence, which is actually an amplification of human intelligence."

But on the other hand, Zhang Yaqin admitted that as machines become more and more intelligent and humans become more and more dependent on these sophisticated machines, humans are, in a sense, less intelligent. "We have become lazy and don't spend as much time thinking as before. This situation can essentially be seen as a change in social behavior."

"It won't be long before we can't even drive a car," said Zhang Yaqin.

The development of driverless cars is faster than expected, and commercial mass production still needs time

When talking about artificial intelligence, we naturally cannot leave out Baidu's popular driverless car. Since its announcement, Baidu's driverless car has attracted countless eyeballs.

Zhang Yaqin once said that cars are very similar to mobile phones. Mobile phones are mobile devices that are placed in users' pockets, while cars are mobile devices that place people in their pockets. There are many similarities between the technologies of mobile phones and cars, as well as the technical accumulation and product services required. The development of cars is faster than everyone imagines. On the one hand, automakers are entering the next stage of development, and on the other hand, Internet companies are also engaged in such technology development.

"We have just completed our first road test in Beijing, starting from our office building, including tests on ordinary roads and highways in a closed state, without any human intervention. Under such circumstances, the driverless car has a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour and can complete various complex operations that a person would perform when driving."

However, Zhang Yaqin said that it will take some time for unmanned vehicles to reach commercial mass production. "It is not just about the innovation of computer technology. We need to be able to sense objects and know the location of pedestrians. Of course, we also need some basic equipment. For example, we need completely different, high-precision maps, more accurate positioning, and radar scanning equipment that can accurately locate within a few centimeters, so we really need more investment and basic equipment preparation."

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.