Baidu AI expert resigns from firm

HONG KONG — In 2014, Baidu announced a hiring coup in the world of artificial intelligence: It had brought in the Stanford and Google alumnus Andrew Ng to lead a new research lab in Silicon Valley.

Just under three years later, Ng said in a blog post this week that he is leaving the Chinese search engine company.

His departure is a blow to Baidu, which now has more than 1,300 employees dedicated to artificial intelligence, a technology that is expected to undergird a range of others, like voice recognition and driverless cars.

Ng’s announcement comes after the technology executive Hugo Barra left Xiaomi, a Chinese phone maker, for Facebook. Ng and Barra were viewed as part of a nascent trend of Silicon Valley executives jumping to Chinese Internet companies. They seemed to represent a new era of closer ties, and competition, between America’s tech giants and China’s.

The resignations underline how that trend never materialized. Few American tech executives followed them, and China’s Internet behemoths remain mostly focused on their home markets. Even so, analysts say, the Chinese companies have grown ever more innovative, particularly in AI.

As China’s dominant search engine, Baidu has long had a lock on a profitable section of online advertising. Yet as more consumers picked up smartphones, the company has struggled to keep its hold on ad spending. In a bid to surpass rivals, the company has poured money into AI technology to support next-generation products.