Leidi.com Rakuten May 5th
Baidu CEO Robin Li responded to rumors that Baidu missed the opportunity to launch ChatGPT first at the Baidu Pride Awards Ceremony a few days ago, saying that Google paid more than $40 million more than Baidu at the time, and also did not launch ChatGPT first. Ilya Sutskever turned around and left Google to participate in the creation of OpenAI.
Robin Li pointed out that this technological race has just begun. In the real AI era, new applications will be developed based on large models, just like the emergence of various Android and iOS-based applications more than a decade ago.
"I have said many times that the big model is Game Changer, which will completely change the rules of the cloud computing game. In the past, cloud computing mainly sold computing power, looking at speed and storage. Today, customers buy cloud services based on whether the framework is good or not. Well, whether the model is good or not, rather than just looking at the computing power."
Li Yanhong said that in an interview some time ago, he said: The gap between Baidu and ChatGPT is about two months, but to be honest, this is a bit out of context, and then he said: This is not the point, the point is how long the gap between Baidu and ChatGPT will take in these two months Time will catch up, maybe soon, maybe never.
"It depends on our own efforts, on our ability to seize opportunities, and on our execution. Whether our strategy, talents, organizational mechanism and culture can adapt to the new situation, and whether we can continue in the new environment Innovation is a matter of life and death."
The following is the transcript of Baidu CEO Robin Li's speech at the Baidu Pride Awards Ceremony:
Dear Baidu students,
On such a special day, I am very happy to see you all. First of all, I would like to congratulate every student in our award-winning team. You are the pride of Baidu and mine! I would also like to thank the family members of Baidu who were present today, and thank you for your silent dedication and support behind the scenes!
6 years ago today, also here, we officially released Baidu's new mission, using technology to make the complex world simpler, and officially sounded the clarion call for Baidu's transformation into an artificial intelligence company. But what I want to say is that our dedication to innovation is consistent, and our investment in technology is long-term and has never wavered.
Ten years ago, that is, in 2013, we realized that the development of artificial intelligence technology would enable unmanned driving to be realized one day. Since then, we have started to invest heavily in autonomous driving technology for ten years. Today, Carrot Kuaipao has far exceeded 2 million orders, making it the world's largest driverless operator.
It was also in that year that we participated in the bidding team of Geoffrey Hinton and his two doctoral students Alex and Ilya. I saw from the media that Baidu did not understand business negotiations and missed the opportunity to make ChatGPT first. In fact, it was not the case. , Google paid more than 40 million U.S. dollars more than we did at the time, didn't they also make it? Ilya Sutskever turned around and left Google to participate in the creation of OpenAI.
Eight years ago, that is, in 2015, we realized that artificial intelligence was gradually becoming a core general-purpose technology and basic technology, which would inevitably lead to changes and leapfrog development in many fields. That year, I gave a speech at the National Two Sessions in the Great Hall of the People, called the "China Brain Project".
My suggestion at the time was to develop and build the world's largest artificial intelligence platform at the national level. This platform can be opened to government agencies, enterprises, institutions, research institutes, etc., so that everyone can carry out corresponding technological innovations on this platform. In recent years, the surge of intelligent computing centers in various places has more or less reflected this idea. At the same time, at Baidu, we also started to build our own full-stack artificial intelligence technology.
Four years ago, we launched the large language model Wenxin 1.0 for the first time, with parameters exceeding 100 million. At that time, 100 million parameters were the definition of large models. And we continue to polish our large-scale model technology through core application search and Xiaodu.
Two years ago, we realized that artificial intelligence technology had undergone a directional change, from discriminative artificial intelligence to generative artificial intelligence. Since then, AIGC has become a direction of our focus, and resources are gradually tilted in this direction.
On March 16 this year, Baidu was the first among major global manufacturers to release Wenxinyiyan, a large-scale model product that matches the ChatGPT, empowering thousands of industries and allowing all products to be reconstructed accordingly. The reason why we were able to do it before Google, Meta, Amazon and other major companies is because we have achieved the world's only full-stack layout and leading layers at the four levels of chips, frameworks, models, and applications. We are conducting joint optimization. At that time, most friends were still lying on the three-tier architecture of chips, operating systems and applications of the previous era.
Fortunately, today, the concept of four-tier architecture has begun to be recognized by the industry. End-to-end optimization allows us to be at ease in big data, big models, and big computing power. Recently, I saw a data that said that the global computing power scale, the United States accounted for 34%, China accounted for 33%, the computing power is about the same. I want to say that computing power does not guarantee that we can take the lead in general artificial intelligence technology. Computing power can be bought, but the ability to innovate cannot be bought and needs to be built by ourselves.
Wenxinyiyan completed four major technical upgrades after more than a month of internal testing. The cost of large-scale model inference has been reduced to one-tenth of the original, or the inference performance has been improved by nearly 10 times. When others are just beginning to think about how to train, we have already gone a long way in reasoning.
Of course, the tech race has only just begun. In the real AI era, new applications will be developed based on large models, just like the emergence of various Android and iOS-based applications more than a decade ago.
Therefore, I have said many times that the big model is a Game Changer, which will completely change the rules of the cloud computing game. In the past, cloud computing mainly sold computing power based on speed and storage. Today, customers purchase cloud services based on the quality of the framework and model, not just the computing power. In the future, when enterprises develop applications based on large models, they will find that Baidu Smart Cloud is the most convenient, fastest, and low-cost.
All the past is prologue. With the growing maturity and involution of the mobile Internet, the competition in today's artificial intelligence field is more intense than ever, and the challenges we face are also unprecedented. In an interview some time ago, I said: The gap between us and ChatGPT is about two months, but to be honest, this is a bit out of context. I then said: This is not the point, the point is how much we need to use the gap between these two months It will take a long time to catch up, maybe soon, maybe never.
It depends on our own efforts, on our ability to seize opportunities, and on our ability to execute. Whether our strategy, talents, organizational mechanism and culture can adapt to the new situation, and whether we can continue to innovate in the new environment, is a matter of life and death.
In the future, we must consciously cultivate the way of thinking and concepts of AI native applications, which requires us to use new concepts to reconstruct each of our current products and businesses. It's not easy, it's hard, because among the 40,000 of us in Baidu, none of us is an aborigine in the AI era. We have all experienced the mobile era, and many of us have also experienced the PC era. Our way of thinking In a sense, it was solidified. I remember when I used the browser for the first time, I felt that the efficiency of that thing was very low. The problem can be solved in a second through the command line. Why do I have to wait for the pictures to be loaded one by one? Only then can I start to operate, but then I realized that it is much easier for ordinary people to click the mouse than to let him learn touch typing;
I also remember when I first started using Apple mobile phones, I felt that the screen was so small, why would users use such a thing to surf the Internet, but when I saw that a few years old children quickly learned to use the touch screen to surf the Internet, I felt Determined to spend two years, Baidu's mobile search traffic exceeded PC search traffic. With the advent of generative AI this time, our first impression is that a problem can be solved by typing one or two keywords and clicking a mouse. Why do we have to use a long paragraph to describe our needs in order to get what we want.
But we need to be aware that how many functions developed by engineers are hidden under layers of menus, and how many inspirations that cannot be obtained through hard thinking can be inspired by some simple prompt words. You should have the courage to change your way of thinking. Of course, changing the way of thinking will be painful, and we will experience various setbacks and sufferings. We need to use perseverance to overcome this inertia and look at this new world with the perspective of discovery and exploration.
In today's world, no great product is made by one person, it needs a dynamic organization. It is so difficult to change a person, but it is even more difficult to change an organization. This requires us to think together and work together. It requires all departments to fully communicate, open discussions, work together, support and help each other, and continuously launch the most competitive products and technologies in the market.
This is a contest of comprehensive capabilities, which requires us to unify our thinking, think positively, be brave in innovation, seize this opportunity, devote ourselves wholeheartedly, and forge ahead.
Finally, let us keep in mind the mission of using technology to make the complex world simpler, live up to our youth, go through the clouds and fog, and pursue the expedition of light!
Today is also the May 4th Youth Day. I wish you all a happy holiday and stay young forever!
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