After persisting for 16 years, what did Baidu show this time?

AI seems far away from our lives, but it is already effectively changing things we take for granted. For example, AI has appeared in search, entertainment, finance, travel and other fields.

As we all know, Baidu is undoubtedly the most high-profile among domestic Internet companies when it comes to betting on the artificial intelligence track.

Just this morning, Baidu and CCTV News jointly held the 2022 Baidu World Conference with the theme of "AI Deepening, All Things Grow". Baidu founder Robin Li and the leaders of Baidu's business sectors people attended the conference.

The conference was held in the form of an online live broadcast, showcasing Baidu's latest progress in multiple AI fields such as intelligent cloud, autonomous driving, and large models.

Main experts attending the Baidu World Conference, source @baidu

## What exactly is the World Conference held by #Baidu? What can we discern from this? Next, we might as well take a look together.

Conference: A window to interpret Baidu’s business

For Baidu, Baidu World Conference is not only a very important annual product and technology launch conference, but also a significant event. An event with a "long history and tradition": Baidu World Conference has been held since 2006, which is only 6 years shorter than the "life span" of Baidu Company (Baidu was founded in 2000).

The theme of Baidu World Conference is basically consistent with Baidu’s business focus during the same period. Therefore, if the theme of Baidu World Conference over the years is combined with Baidu’s development status during the same period, it will be very easy to It is easy to discover Baidu’s development trend in business direction.

Generally speaking, the theme of Baidu World Conference has experienced two obvious changes.

The first stage (2006-2010): The theme of this stage of Baidu World Conference focuses on "marketing" and "search". The main content of the conference is to promote Baidu in Influence in the media field, the second is to release new products or new features related to search. For example, at the 2008 Baidu World Conference, the blockbuster product launched by Robin Li himself was a new marketing product-"My Marketing Center". In 2010, Baidu launches a new application open platform to facilitate Internet users to "search and use".

During this period, Baidu seemed to position itself as a search-based media company.

The second phase (2011-2015): Starting from 2011, the domestic Internet began to enter the mobile Internet era. Accordingly, the theme of Baidu World Conference mainly focused on "How to embrace the mobile Internet ", the representative ones are the Baidu World Conference in 2013 and 2014. The theme of the former is "Mobile Technology Innovation", and the main promotion at the conference is that it has a user experience similar to Native App, but also has the retrieval and intelligent distribution of Web App "Light applications" with special features; the latter focuses on O2O and direct accounts. Robin Li also opened the conference and elaborated on the impact of mobile Internet on the technology industry, users and Baidu.

During this period, Baidu also made constant moves in the field of mobile Internet: Baidu successively acquired or invested in 91 Wireless (search distribution), PPS Video (online TV), Nuomi (location-based Providing services) and Uber (taxi-hailing services), trying to build their own kingdom in the O2O field.

The third stage (2016 to present): In 2016, AlphaGo defeated the world Go champion Lee Sedol. Artificial intelligence once again attracted the attention of the world. Baidu soon began to deploy in artificial intelligence. The theme of Baidu World Congress has never been absent from AI, and the products released are all related to AI. For example, the "Baidu Brain" was launched at Baidu World Congress in 2016, and the Apollo unmanned car was launched in 2020.

Compared with other domestic IT giants, the reason why Baidu immediately “All in AI” is that Baidu has long accumulated experience in artificial intelligence. According to Robin Li, in 2012, he noticed breakthroughs in deep learning in academia and applications. At the Baidu Annual Meeting in January 2013, Robin Li officially announced the establishment of IDL (Institute of Deep Learning). And appointed himself as dean.

On the other hand, it is also related to Baidu’s failure to gain sufficient advantages in the mobile Internet, especially in the O2O field.

On the mobile side, the Baidu App jump speed is not as convenient as the Web side; Baidu purchased 91 Wireless for US$1.9 billion, hoping to obtain the distribution rights of mobile applications, but the core channel for App distribution still returns to mobile phone manufacturers In the hands of the app store, 91 App Store finally faded out of the competition after changing its name to Baidu Mobile Assistant; Baidu Waimai once competed with Meituan Waimai and Ele.me, but eventually sold itself to Ele.me; Baidu Nuomi, once popular, has basically disappeared now ; Uber China, which Baidu invested in, was acquired by Didi, which forced Baidu to exit the online car-hailing table.

AI is still the focus

Judging from the theme of this year’s Baidu World Conference and the results displayed at the conference, this year’s conference has obvious continuity with last year’s conference , the focus is still on three aspects: first, demonstrating innovative breakthroughs in the field of autonomous driving, second, releasing Baidu’s ability to empower thousands of industries, and third, demonstrating Baidu’s AIGC (artificial intelligence automatically generated content) capabilities.

1. Breakthrough in autonomous driving

At last year’s Baidu World Conference, the forward-looking concept of “car robot” was first proposed and Baidu “car robot” was released. At the same time, Baidu also launched the autonomous driving travel service platform “Luobo Kuaipao”.

This year, Baidu’s “car robot” Apollo has made further progress in products and technology: the newly released sixth-generation mass-produced unmanned vehicle Apollo RT6 has realized the sunroof keel and The integration of lidar and cameras also reduces the cost to 250,000 yuan.

##Apollo RT6, picture source @live screenshot

On the other hand, this year, Luobo Kuaipao has been launched in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuhan and other places. It has also obtained China's first license to provide unmanned manned travel services on public roads in Beijing.

With regard to policy, my country has promulgated its first regulations regulating the management of intelligent connected vehicles, autonomous driving has moved from technology to application, and the commercialization of the autonomous driving platform Luobo Kuaipao will continue to advance. momentum.

2. Empowering thousands of industries

The 2022 Baidu World Conference uses real and vivid cases, such as the combination of AI and wind power, water affairs, manufacturing, and fire protection, to Demonstrate how Baidu AI helps the real economy "evolve on the cloud" and use this to release version 2.0 of Baidu Intelligent Cloud's industrial Internet platform "Kaiwu".

Picture source@live screenshot

And Baidu empowers Qianxing Behind Baiye is the AI ​​and cloud computing technology provided by Baidu Intelligent Cloud, which is supported by underlying technical capabilities such as Fei Paddle and Wenxin Large Model.

In addition to Kaiwu 2.0, the conference also released the Baidu Intelligent Cloud Jiuzhou District and County Brain, which aims to use digital technology to boost urban and rural governance at the grassroots level and incubate the digitization of local industries, culture, and ecological scenes. Application to create a new digital engine for rural revitalization and grassroots development. Use AI to promote coordinated development of urban and rural areas and revitalize rural areas.

##Picture source@live screenshot

It is foreseeable that Baidu will still We will continue to innovate in underlying technologies such as the Wenxin large model to lower the threshold of AI application and accelerate the inclusiveness of AI.

Picture source @live screenshot3. Artificial intelligence automatically generates content

The AI ​​planning officer and deputy host of the 2022 Baidu World Conference is the AI ​​digital person Xi Jiajia, and another digital person Du Xiaoxiao also appeared at the conference.

Picture source@live screenshot

In addition, Baidu At the conference site, a fragment of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", one of China's top ten famous paintings restored by AI, was displayed. Whether it is digital human painting or AI restoration of fragments, the core technical capability behind it is AIGC (AI Generated Content, artificial intelligence autonomously generated content).

AI restored "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", picture source @live screenshot

Prior to this, Baidu AI digital people have made their mark in innovation activities many times. For example, Xijia boarded my country's first digital manned spacecraft, served as the "000 owner" of the Jidu ROBO-1 concept car, and released and sold paintings in collaboration with Qee Bear and FE racing; Du Xiaoxiao recently not only live-streamed challenges He passed the college entrance examination Chinese composition, exhibited his "Unbounded" series of paintings at the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts Undergraduate Graduation Exhibition, and partnered with Gong Jun Digital Human to launch the first AI digital human singing and composition song MV.

According to reports, if Baidu achieves a breakthrough in AI algorithms in the future, it is possible that through its digital human platform "Xiling", the cost of digital human production will be reduced tenfold or a hundredfold, and it will be The production cycle of digital humans has been shortened from several months to hours; the production cost of digital humans will also be reduced from millions to 10,000 yuan. In this way, enterprises and brands can also easily provide digital human production and operation services.

In addition to the above, three Xiaodu smart home products were also released at the Baidu World Conference: smart fitness mirror M30, voice smart alarm clock and large-screen eye protection learning machine P20.

Picture source@live screenshot

Xiaodu Technology CEO Jing Kun It also announced at the Baidu World Conference that it would add offline whole-house smart experience stores to accelerate the implementation of Xiaodu’s “future home” into thousands of households.

Written at the end

Public data shows that in terms of R&D investment, Baidu’s core R&D expenses in 2021 will be 22.1 billion yuan, most of which will be used for personnel-related expenses, accounting for Baidu's core revenue ratio reaches 23%, and its R&D investment intensity ranks first among the top 500 private enterprises in China. AI, as Baidu's future growth engine, has undoubtedly become Baidu's main R&D investment area. In the future, can Baidu maintain its advantages in digital people, autonomous driving and other fields, and turn its technological advantages into market advantages, thus ushering in the "first "Second Growth Curve" still needs time to be tested, so we'll have to wait and see.

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