If you were to see yourself twenty years ago and have a conversation with him (her), what would you chat with him (her)? No need to brainstorm, this sci-fi movie-like scene has already been staged at the "Baidu World 2020" conference.
On September 15, the "Baidu World 2020" conference organized by Baidu and CCTV News was held in the form of online live broadcast. In this conference with the theme of "All Things Intelligence", CCTV host Kang Hui, Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li, and two virtual persons, "Xiaokang" and "Xiao Li" more than 20 years ago, launched a The wonderful dialogue "crossing time and space" also let the national audience know the technical support behind it-Baidu Brain. This time, Baidu Brain has been upgraded to 6.0 once again, becoming the "new AI infrastructure", empowering thousands of industries with intelligent upgrades through Baidu Smart Cloud.
Following the release of "virtual humans" such as financial digital humans and virtual moderators, at the 2020 Baidu World Congress, terminal virtual humans with cognitive capabilities and machine-to-machine conversations made their debut. The two virtual persons "Xiaokang" and "Xiao Li" were created based on the image, memory and knowledge possessed by Kang Hui and Robin Li 20 years ago. Not only the images, actions, and sounds are close to real people, but they can also chat with people smoothly and freely. Virtual people can talk to each other. After talking to my "self" 20 years ago, he repeatedly praised it "there is no obstacle to communicating with us". "Compared with the virtual humans we have seen before, this virtual human is knowledgeable and understandable, and it will make you feel that you are facing a'real human' with thinking ability." Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng revealed the secret.
"Behind the virtual person is the comprehensive application of Baidu brain's multiple AI technologies such as vision, speech, language and knowledge," said Wang Haifeng. Not only virtual people, but Baidu’s brains are behind the unmanned vehicles, Xiaodu speakers, and Du Xiaoxiao displayed in the Baidu world, as well as Baidu search, maps, input methods, and Baidu translation that are frequently used by the public.
As a collection of Baidu's AI technology accumulation and industrial practice for many years, Baidu's core brain technology continues to maintain its lead, continuously consolidating the "soft and hard integrated AI large-scale production platform", and accelerating industrial intelligent transformation and upgrading through Baidu Smart Cloud.
In terms of core technology, Baidu Brain 6.0 already has the capability of "knowledge-enhanced cross-modal deep semantic understanding". Based on the 550 billion massive knowledge mastered, and the "knowledge-enhanced continuous learning semantic understanding" technology, Baidu's brain integrates different information such as speech, language, and vision to achieve cross-modal semantic understanding and obtain a unified understanding of the world. With this ability, the machine can understand speech, understand images and videos, understand language, and then understand the real world.
On the other hand, Baidu's brain "soft and hard integrated AI production platform" is also continuing to upgrade. On the "soft" aspect, the "operating system in the intelligent age" Fei Paddle deep learning platform has fully upgraded its API system, allowing developers to develop more conveniently and deploy models more efficiently; on the "hard" aspect, Baidu's self-developed AI chip Baidu Kunlun 2 is pre-released. Compared with China's first cloud general-purpose AI processor "Baidu Kunlun 1" released in 2018, the performance of Baidu Kunlun 2 has been greatly improved, and it can better meet the AI computing needs of various scenarios.
Baidu Brain 6.0—AI new infrastructure, has opened more than 270 leading AI capabilities, gathered 2.3 million developers, and the number of models released by enterprises exceeded 310,000. It is the industry's most comprehensive, leading, and largest-scale AI open platform. It will be more agile and more efficient to support the large-scale production of AI industry and help accelerate the intelligentization of the industry.
In addition to technologically leading advantages, Baidu Feida and Baidu Kunlun also enabled China to have independent intellectual property rights in the two core AI core technologies of AI operating system and AI chip, which made Kang Hui very excited. Li Yanhong said that technologies such as chips and operating systems that were “stuck” in the past require long-term persistence. Their commercial value cannot be manifested in just a few years. We need our scientific and technical personnel to be ambitious and competent. Be patient, endure loneliness, and have faith. We also have long-term considerations and patience, hoping to make breakthroughs little by little in these "stuck neck" technologies in China, and finally be widely accepted by the market.
At the same time, Baidu Smart Cloud continues to export the AI technology of Baidu's brain, drawing a picture of the intelligent era of accelerating intelligence upgrades in all walks of life and realizing "intelligence of all things". Wang Haifeng introduced that Baidu Smart Cloud is like the Buddhist scripture pavilion of Shaolin Temple in martial arts novels, integrating Baidu’s leading AI technology into countless "inner skills" and "martial arts skills", empowering all areas of society and economy, and accelerating China's industrial intelligence The pace of change.
For example, in the energy industry, State Grid Shandong Electric Power uses Baidu AI to create intelligent inspections, and is helping electric inspection workers complete their work quickly, efficiently and safely, without having to run around, sun and rain on the inspection road every day; Baidu and China Building materials work together to build smart factories, smart logistics, digital mines, industrial unmanned driving, data centers, etc., to promote the development of building materials production toward intelligence, green, and high-end; Baidu cooperates with the emergency management department to use AI to warn of multiple floods and forests Natural disasters such as fires and earthquakes protect everyone's personal and property safety; Baidu's new generation of artificial intelligence office platform "Ruliu" makes corporate offices smarter, more efficient and smoother.
To build a solid AI infrastructure, promote the continuous implementation of AI, and also cultivate a large number of talents for the industry, Baidu has always been concerned about the healthy and long-term development of AI. At present, Baidu has trained more than 1 million AI talents. In the next 5 years, it will continue to train 5 million AI talents to provide talent guarantee for the development of China's smart economy and smart society.
"Thanks to all the institutions and enterprises in China that are committed to the continuous research, development and application of artificial intelligence technology like Baidu. They have overcome many difficulties and obstacles brought by the current complex and severe environment and continue to make the artificial intelligence industry bigger and stronger. Let us have more autonomy for future development." Kang Hui also expressed his gratitude to thousands of AI technology workers. He said, "Your efforts will definitely support China's future sky."
Li Yanhong said that through these technological efforts and innovations, I believe that the country will become stronger and stronger, the society will become more and more harmonious, life will become more and more happier, and the future will definitely become better and better.