Baidu’s AI development progress makes it ‘competitive’ in global market
Chinese internet search engine Baidu Inc on Thursday unveiled an agreement to cooperate with China FAW Group Co in mass production of L4 autonomous passenger cars by 2020.
An expert said that as Chinese technology companies seek to develop core technologies, they are able to stand on the same stage and compete with their global counterparts.
A small batch of L4 autonomous vehicles will be rolled off the production line by 2019 and many such cars will be put into operation in many cities across the country by 2020.
At the 2018 Baidu World Conference held in Beijing, CEO Robin Li Yanhong said that the company is stepping up efforts to advance its artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the agricultural, manufacturing and services sectors. Li also released the company’s ACE AI plan, which involves autonomous driving, connected roads and efficient cities.
“The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has been proposed for more than 60 years, and every practitioner and AI technology development company asks ‘Can AI make the world better’?”
On October 17, Baidu became the first Chinese company to join an AI ethics group led by top US technology companies. The Partnership on AI also counts Alphabet Inc’s Google, Apple Inc and Facebook Inc as members.
“We will work with the world's top AI companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon to safeguard the ethics of the AI sector,” Li said at the conference.
He also noted that “we hope that AI will help and serve people instead of replacing and harming people.”
“We have confidence in the AI world as well as the future world,” Li said.
Liu Dingding, an industry analyst based in Beijing, said the US dominated the technology industry in previous years and Chinese companies could only export products.
“With arduous exploration and development, domestic technology companies have obtained some core technology and can now export technology models and experience, which represents big progress,” Liu told the Global Times on Thursday.
For example, Baidu has achieved many breakthroughs in driverless technology, but for some US companies, their autonomous technology has long been in the test phase and not applied on a large scale, according to the expert.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Wednesday stressed boosting the development of the country’s new generation of AI, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Xi said accelerating the development of new-generation AI is a strategic issue, key for China to seize the opportunities in the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, the report said.
China’s AI industry is at a phase of rapid growth with a market worth 21.69 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) in 2017, up 52.8 percent year-on-year, and the figure is expected to exceed 70 billion yuan by 2020, according to Beijing-based research firm ibaogao. com.
Li also said at the conference that the search engine will increase investment in smart transportation in the future through big data to resolve issues like traffic jams.