Baidu Research / Institute of Deep Learning

What it is

Baidu Research is the research organisation of the Chinese internet company Baidu. The company says its research organisation has laboratories in Silicon Valley and Beijing ^[1], and its best-known unit is the Institute of Deep Learning (IDL), which Baidu dates to 2013 ^[1].

Origins

Baidu's own announcement says the company established the Institute of Deep Learning in 2013 ^[1]. The Paper reports that IDL was set up in July 2013, with Baidu chairman Robin Li as its president and Yu Kai as executive vice president ^[2]. Li gave a different month in a 2017 speech, saying that Baidu established IDL in January 2013 and describing it as the world's first corporate research institute named after deep learning; in the same speech he spelled the abbreviation out as Institute of Deep Learning ^[3]. China National Radio reported that Baidu founded IDL in 2013 under Li's direction, dedicated to research on making computers as intelligent as the human brain ^[4].

Three laboratories

When Baidu announced the institute's later reorganisation, it described Baidu Research as comprising three laboratories: the Silicon Valley AI Lab, the Beijing Deep Learning Lab (formerly the Institute of Deep Learning) and the Beijing Big Data Lab ^[1].

Research areas

Baidu said IDL had made significant progress in image recognition, image search, speech recognition, natural language processing, semantic understanding, machine translation and targeted advertising ^[1]. On speech specifically, China National Radio reported Baidu's statement that progress in speech recognition accuracy over the previous year had exceeded the industry's total progress over many years ^[4].

Andrew Ng and the Sunnyvale centre

On 16 May 2014 US time, Baidu announced the appointment of Andrew Ng as chief scientist, in overall charge of Baidu Research ^[1]. The announcement was made at the opening of Baidu's new US research and development centre in Sunnyvale, California, which became the base of the Silicon Valley AI Lab ^[1]. Baidu said the new Sunnyvale office would strengthen its research capability on top of its existing Silicon Valley development capacity ^[1]. The company noted that Ng had created and led Google's deep learning team and had published extensively in robotics and artificial intelligence ^[1]. Baidu quoted chairman and CEO Robin Li welcoming Ng and saying that artificial intelligence would play an increasingly important role in changing people's lives ^[1]. It also quoted senior vice president Wang Jing saying that the research institutes would recruit top Chinese, American and global research talent ^[1].

The Paper's account of the same period says that after Ng arrived, Baidu's AI research formed three laboratories across China and the United States, with Ng heading Baidu Research over the Silicon Valley AI Lab, IDL, the Big Data Lab and an augmented reality lab ^[2].

Where it sits

Taken together, the published material describes an organisation with a few clear features: its laboratories are named directly after deep learning and big data rather than after product lines ^[1]; its research sites are spread across China and the United States ^[1]; and one chief scientist, recruited from outside the company, was put in charge of the whole of Baidu Research ^[1][2]. The frame the company itself uses for the work was set out by Li in a 2017 speech, in which he said artificial intelligence would play an increasingly visible role in changing people's lives in the coming years ^[1].