Baidu offers brainy solutions

Chinese tech behemoth reveals its latest bid to gain the upper hand in the field of artificial intelligence

Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc officially unveiled its latest plans in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, including "Baidu Brain", which simulates the human brain with computer technology, and a partnership with Nvidia Corp to develop driverless vehicles.

"Artificial intelligence is the next big development in the internet industry, which is the core of Baidu. We spend great efforts developing this technology in the past five to six years," said Robin Li, chief executive officer of the Beijing-based company, at the company's annual technology event - Baidu World.

Li said "Baidu Brain" consists of three parts, including artificial intelligence algorithms, computing power and big data. "It has the capacities of natural language processing, voice recognition, image identification and processing and user portraits."

"Anyone just records 50 sentences as required in 30 minutes, and our speech synthesis technology could simulate the person's voice. We could let everyone have their own voice model," said Li.

Moreover, the accuracy rate of voice recognition has reached 97 percent, while face recognition accuracy has reached 99.7 percent, Li said. With regard to image recognition technology, it is mainly applied in augmented reality.

This in turn can be used to develop products and market services. AI technology is expected to be applied into different industries in the future, involving healthcare, traffic and finance.

"I'd like to invite everyone to rethink the sector we're in - to rethink the Chinese economy," said Li.

Driverless vehicles are another area the company is making a big bet on. Baidu will cooperate with US-based chipmaker Nvidia Corp to build operating software for self-driving that encompasses mapping and adapts to changing environments.

AI has become a strategic area of investment for technology companies including Apple and Google.

Tan Tieniu, a leading expert in China's artificial intelligence sector said that the global AI market had a total value of $127 billion in 2015, adding that the figure is expected to reach $165 billion this year and exceed $200 billion in 2018.

Zhao Ziming, an analyst at Analysys International in Beijing, said: "The development of artificial intelligence and the internet of things is an irresistible trend, and Baidu Brain is a core product in these two fields.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn