Lu Qi manages Baidu's all-in AI strategy Baidu's overall strategy for artificial intelligence

199it News July 5, 2017, is perhaps the most important day in Baidu's history after Baidu's IPO. Lu Qi, the core operator of Baidu's business, Baidu Group President and COO, and Vice Chairman of the Board, fully demonstrated Baidu's layout and planning in the field of artificial intelligence at the Baidu Create 2017 Baidu AI Developer Conference.

After joining Baidu on January 17, 2017, within half a year, Lu Qi streamlined the team structure and business direction within Baidu, betting Baidu's future on the next trends in the field of artificial intelligence technology.

Today, Baidu Create 2017 Baidu AI Developer Conference is hailed as Baidu's big exercise in the field of artificial intelligence. At the same time, Lu Qi also conveyed a very core point of view: AI is the future of Baidu.

Breaking the stigma of search engine companies

From its founding in 1999 to its IPO in 2006 and the 10 years spanning the mobile Internet, Baidu has always been branded as a search engine company. The outside world's impression of Baidu has also stagnated.

In the era of mobile Internet, Baidu was too big to turn around. By the time it came to its senses, it had already missed many opportunities compared to its peers in the era of mobile Internet.

However, Baidu has been changing and looking for strategic transformation. The path of Tencent and Alibaba is not suitable for Baidu. Baidu needs to find its own unique genetic breakthrough.

At least five years ago, Baidu began to lay out and accumulate artificial intelligence. Over the years, Baidu has participated in nearly 100 artificial intelligence projects, both internally and externally, laying the foundation for Baidu to go all in on AI.

Baidu is not doing local AI but AI platform

At the Baidu AI Developer Conference today, Lu Qi expressed Baidu's views on the future of the AI ​​industry:

"The difference between AI and other technologies is that data plays an important and special role. We must acquire capabilities through system + data, learning and training; data is a bridge to observe the world and a carrier of knowledge. With good algorithms, software and hardware, we can automatically acquire knowledge from data.

The core of this AI revolution is the knowledge revolution, which is to acquire knowledge quickly and automatically. The history of mankind is a history of understanding the world, transforming the world, and pursuing knowledge. AI will greatly accelerate our ability to understand and transform the world, and it will be a very important milestone in human history.

AI is a new generation of computing platform. Historically, computing platforms have evolved through several generations, from PCs to the Internet, to mobile, and to the cloud. Each generation of technology platform consists of a front-end and a back-end: the front-end is mainly driven by the ability of human-computer interaction, and the back-end is mainly driven by the scale of computing resources. The computing platform in the AI ​​era will take a big step forward.

The backend of the AI ​​platform is the intelligent cloud, which not only provides large-scale computing resources, but also provides a large amount of knowledge in various industries, such as medical brain, education brain, travel brain... With the accumulation of massive data, the intelligent cloud will provide more and more knowledge.

The front end of the AI ​​platform is no longer just a general computing device, it will be composed of sensors, silicon chips, and intelligent software. Every refrigerator, every air conditioner, every TV, every household, every car...everything in the world can become an end, can listen, speak, and see, can be connected to the intelligent cloud, and can increasingly understand every sentence and every picture.

The AI ​​platform will be a huge driving force for society. Compared with the Internet era, it can bring our society into a new world of awakening everything.”

From Baidu Cloud, Baidu Brain, DuerOS to Apollo Project, Baidu is planning its overall AI strategy

From the perspective of the industrial chain, most companies will choose a certain part of the industrial chain as their main focus. "Specialization" can help small companies move faster and deeper.

Baidu's layout in artificial intelligence is a global plan, which includes not only the bottom-level foundation, middle-level support, but also the top-level design.

Lu Qi believes that "Baidu is an AI company. The core of Baidu is AI data technology and talents. Baidu will use AI as a basis to significantly improve our core businesses, search, information flow, and mobile Baidu. This is our primary strategic focus. At the same time, Baidu will use AI to create a series of new businesses, including our financial business, our intelligent cloud business, self-driving cars, etc. Each of these new businesses has strong vitality, strong growth space, and a healthy and good business model. They all have the ability to become future businesses, and these are all self-driving cars.
Baidu will be an AI platform, because the best way to develop Baidu's AI-based business is platformization and ecosystemization. The purpose of Baidu's platform cooperation is to output capabilities and integrate resources. Use a healthy and stable business model to achieve continuous win-win results with every partner and developer. We have the greatest determination and 100% sincerity to build our common future with every partner and developer present. The future belongs to creators. The theme of today's conference is creation. The future of AI belongs to developers. The history of our industry is here. Developers are the driving force and main driving force of our industry. Baidu's future is based on win-win results with developers. The success of developers is the real success of Baidu. This is our promise, and this is the core value concept of Baidu's AI platform.

Baidu's AI development ecosystem has two components: removing obstacles and creating opportunities for every AI developer. There are too many opportunities for AI, and the status of AI development is too high. We will provide tools, data, infrastructure, and a good development environment for every AI developer. The long-term strategic direction of Baidu's AI ecosystem is to strive to lead the next generation of AI computing platforms."

Today at the 2017 Baidu AI Developer Conference, Lu Qi was very excited, unlike his usual Lu Qi. Many media reporters jokingly lamented that this might be the result of artificial intelligence possession.

Another novel scene at the conference was the appearance of Baidu founder and chairman Robin Li. Li arrived at the conference site in an autonomous driving car developed by Baidu and Bosch based on Apollo technology. Li gave more screen time to Lu Qi.

From a business perspective, Robin Li is now confident in handing over the reins of Baidu's future operations to Lu Qi, and Lu Qi has also gained great trust from Robin Li.