Inside Baidu's Bid to Lead the AI Revolution

mirandakatz writes: China's search giant missed mobile: As WeChat and Alibaba deftly transformed their companies to suit mobile, Baidu stayed stuck in browser mode. It can't afford to make that mistake with the AI revolution—and, as Jessi Hempel writes at Backchannel, it just might have an edge in its bid to come out on top. There's huge governmental support for AI in china, including a plan to make the country the world leader in AI by 2030, and it has double the number of people online than America does—AKA vast quantities of raw data. Hempel traveled to Beijing to chronicle this tenuous moment in Baidu’s history, and has delivered a deep look at Baidu's AI be on AI, speaking with key leaders including CEO Robin Li and COO Qi Lu. She writes that “Robin Li is doubling down on a future beyond 2017. In that future, Baidu is not a series of products, but rather an engine that belongs inside everything—an engine that powers Baidu back to dominance in China, and possibly far beyond.”