Baidu goes in for ‘deep learning’ with Silicon Valley, China AI labs

Since Chinese search giant Baidu opened its ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Lab back in January, it has been making some interesting research dedicated to ‘deep learning’. This is done through conducting experiments in order to try and mimic the human brain using hardware and software.

Although the company has been trying to implement itself in emerging markets via key partnerships and market-dedicated services, Baidu has now also trying to define itself on the innovation front.

It’s called the Institute of Deep Learning and has facilities in both China and Silicon Valley. “We have a really big dream of using deep learning to simulate the functionality, the power, the intelligence of the human brain” engineer Kai Yu announced in one of his publications. Google, Apple and IBM have been at the forefront of artificial intelligence technology with noted achievements like Google Voice and Siri or IBM’s supercomputer (aka Blue Brain).

We have seen other interesting rival services and products such as its Baidu Eye, which is similar to Google Glass, or its voice activated-search. These are the first steps to rival technological giants on the innovation front.

Since dominating Chinese internet-search revenue with over 78%, the Chinese rival to Google has made inroads into emerging markets such as Africa, the Middle-East and South America — trying to strengthen its potential markets that have been left untouched by the likes of Apple and Google. Baidu released a fast HTML 5 Android browser in September last year and has since been pre-installed on phones bought through telecom giant Orange. This browser compresses user data- making web services like Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter more compatible given the expensive or slow data charges of the environment.

According to Wired, trying to muscle itself into a very competitive and dominant market is a very bold move by Biadu. “We need to fundamentally change the architecture of the whole system,” Yu explains in a Wired article, meaning that the algorithmic relationships between image and voice recognition for example should become better at ‘understanding’ human interaction. This would improve the user experience. As mentioned by The Register, CEO Robin Lee announced that he hopes the Institute of Deep Learning will become one of the world’s top innovators. Hopefully we will see more competitive products and services bringing prices down for emerging markets.