[NetEase Technology News, August 26] Today, the opening ceremony of the 2019 China International Intelligent Industry Expo and the Big Data Intelligence Summit opened in Chongqing. Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, delivered a keynote speech.

He first said that in the past year, artificial intelligence has changed from the cool effects that everyone talks about to a social consensus and a national strategy. What we have to do is to solidly promote the penetration of artificial intelligence in various industrial fields, help various fields and industries improve efficiency, and improve people's experience.

In view of this, Robin Li made three suggestions. The first is to pay attention to safety and efficiency. He mentioned that this is very obvious in the field of driverless driving. Why we are reducing the speed now is to ensure safety, but also to consider the cost. When can the cost of sensors be reduced to the point where it is really more cost-effective than using humans to drive, etc. This is what we need to pay attention to.

Secondly, Robin Li suggested speeding up the construction of infrastructure. He pointed out that in the field of autonomous driving, the United States places more emphasis on bicycle intelligence, and their regulations or related laws on road testing are also more flexible. China has advantages in infrastructure, and we can add a lot of equipment on the roadside to improve safety and efficiency.

The third is to make full use of open source and open platforms. Especially open source platforms, which China has developed relatively late, will play an increasingly important role in the development of artificial intelligence as a whole. Open source does not mean free and independent and controllable. Many open source things are still in the hands of others. We must fully understand this. (Dingxi)

The following is the transcript of Robin Li’s speech at the 2019 Smart Expo:

Dear leaders and distinguished guests, good morning!

I am very happy to come to Chongqing again after a year. I deeply feel that Chongqing has undergone many changes. Chongqing is always a vibrant city, but this time I feel that this city is full of technology and a sense of the future. Especially when I walk along the riverside at night, I see various neon lights with slogans about this Smart Expo and about intelligence, which makes me feel that this city is rapidly leading the pace of global intelligence.

Of course these are still a little superficial. In the past few days, the Chongqing Municipal Government has intensively signed contracts with major companies, including Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Xiaomi, etc. I believe that in the next year or in the next few years, Chongqing’s intelligence will further accelerate and further lead the development of China and the world.

Chongqing has changed a lot. In fact, artificial intelligence has also changed a lot in the past year. Many people may not notice this change, but when I say it, I believe many people will agree with my observation. In the past year, artificial intelligence has changed from the cool effects that everyone talks about to a social consensus and a national strategy. What we have to do is to solidly promote the penetration of artificial intelligence in various industrial fields, help various fields and industries improve efficiency, and improve people's experience.

So we see that in the past, everyone liked to say that artificial intelligence defeated the world Go champion. Today, we are more concerned about the convenience that artificial intelligence brings to people's lives and how much efficiency it improves people's work. In the past, we might have talked about how a certain driverless car traveled thousands of kilometers on the highway without human intervention. Today we may be more concerned about how autonomous driving can be truly safe, how it can reduce costs, and how it can run on open roads in low-speed environments.

In the past we mightThere will be rumors that some robots that look like humans can go up stairs, get up on their own if they fall, and even the robot's skin can be as elastic as human skin. Today we pay more attention to how much value a machine can bring to people as an assistant. For example, the development trend of smart speakers is not to make them grow legs so that they can walk. Today, you can see that the shipment volume of our speakers with screens has exceeded that of smart speakers without screens. The human body does not have a screen, so the development direction of smart speakers as a carrier of intelligent assistants is not to look more and more like people, but to become more and more able to help people and serve people.

In the past, we were fond of saying that China ranked first in the world in the number of published papers and patent applications on artificial intelligence, but today we are more interested in seeing how much say we have in the overall development framework of artificial intelligence. Recently, the British magazine "Nature" seems to have published a long report comparing the development of artificial intelligence in China and the United States. Well, it did mention that China has published a lot of papers and applied for patents a lot, but there are still gaps in our deep learning framework for artificial intelligence. These are things we need to work hard to improve in the future. Therefore, artificial intelligence no longer focuses on coolness, but on how to advance and implement it in a down-to-earth manner.

So here, I would like to make three suggestions:

First, pay attention to safety and efficiency.

This is actually very obvious in the field of driverless driving. Why we are reducing the speed now is to ensure safety. Why do we think low-speed L4 will be implemented before high-speed L3? Because it is also considered from a safety perspective. We also have to consider the cost. When can the cost of sensors on self-driving cars be reduced to the point where it is really more economical and more cost-effective than using people to drive. We also pay attention to various AI chips. We often see that the computing power of this AI chip is many times higher than the strongest computing power, but what is its power consumption? Can it be produced in batches at a controllable cost? We say that artificial intelligence will wake up everything, so every household appliance must have a voice recognition chip. So can this chip meet our green and energy-saving standards? This is what we need to pay attention to.

The second suggestion is to speed up the construction of infrastructure.

In the field of autonomous driving, China and the United States actually have considerable competition. The United States places more emphasis on bicycle intelligence, so their regulations or related laws on road testing are more flexible. But in China, we have advantages in infrastructure. We can add a lot of equipment on the roadside to improve safety and efficiency.

Third, my suggestion is to make full use of open source and open platforms.

Especially the open source platform, which China developed relatively late, but its role in the entire development of artificial intelligence will be increasingly felt by everyone to be very, very important. Moreover, open source does not mean that everything is free and can be controlled independently. Many open source things are still in the hands of others. We must fully understand this.

The General Secretary pointed out in 2017: "In the future, all localities should focus on building smart cities and promote technology integration, business integration, and data integration." Baidu will focus on current projects and future opportunities, work with the Chongqing Municipal Government, and partners from all walks of life to accelerate the development of industrial intelligence, promote the formulation of industry rules, and promoteActively innovate business models, promote the implementation of AI technology in all aspects of society and people's livelihood, and welcome the new world of intelligence.

I am looking forward to the arrival of this day, and Baidu is more willing to do its best for the arrival of this day. Thank you all!

(End)