Robin Li: Baidu intelligent vehicle is being developed and is expected to meet with you in 2023.

On July 8th, at the opening ceremony of the 2021 World Conference on artificial intelligence, Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li revealed in his speech that Baidu's smart car is being developed and is expected to meet with you in 2023.

Robin Li also talked about Baidu's understanding of smart cars. Some people think of a smart car as a computer with four wheels or a big mobile phone, he said. In Baidu's view, the smart car may be more like an intelligent robot in the future, or vice versa.

He believes that artificial intelligence will undoubtedly affect the process of human development in the next 40 years. This force is constantly accumulating today. In transportation, finance, industry, energy, media and other industries, the application of artificial intelligence technology has given new ideas and new solutions to the digital upgrading of the industry, and even has begun to reshape the whole industry, And then affect the future of human society.

Baidu has been preparing for this change for many years. Robin Li said that Baidu recently launched a new generation of shared Apollo, which aims to make travel cheaper than the current network. In the next 2-3 years, Baidu plans to promote the sharing of unmanned vehicles to 30 city in the country.

The following is the full text of Robin Li's speech:

Since 2018, the world artificial intelligence conference has been successfully held for three times. Artificial intelligence as a national strategy has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Artificial intelligence is one of the three leading industries for Shanghai to implement the national strategic plan and focus on development, and it is also an important driving force for urban digital transformation.

In the past few years, discussions on artificial intelligence mostly focused on two aspects: one is the help of artificial intelligence for future economic development and efficiency improvement, and the other is how to prevent the unpredictable risks brought by the development of artificial intelligence technology, that is, the ethical issues of artificial intelligence. There is not much discussion about the value of artificial intelligence to other aspects of human society, that is, the social value of artificial intelligence. I think the social value of artificial intelligence is closely related to people's yearning for a better life and high-quality development, which is worthy of serious treatment from all walks of life.

For example, when we talk about intelligent transportation, we pay more attention to the promotion of traffic efficiency on urban GDP growth. According to our calculation, 15% of the improvement of traffic efficiency can be converted into 2.4% of GDP growth. But we ignore that transportation is actually a livelihood issue with obvious social, service and public attributes. People's feelings about traffic congestion and restrictions on travel and purchase far exceed their corresponding economic losses.

According to the agency's statistics, about 1.35 million people are killed in traffic accidents every year, which means that one person is killed in traffic accidents every 20 seconds. And 94% of traffic accidents are caused by human factors. Among the criminal crimes in our country, the crime of dangerous driving ranks the first, accounting for about a quarter of the total number of criminal crimes, which is a very shocking number.

The transportation industry accounts for 16% of the 51 billion tons of global carbon emissions every year. Improving transportation efficiency means reducing carbon emissions and avoiding climate disasters.

Through "smart car" and "smart road", the construction of an intelligent transportation system can not only significantly reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents and improve the probability of safe passage, but also make people more aware of a better life and make travel more green and environmentally friendly.

For another example, China is stepping into an aging society. Relevant departments predict that during the "14th five year plan" period, China's elderly population will exceed 300 million, from mild aging to moderate aging. This change poses new challenges to economic growth, scientific and technological innovation, social security, public services and other aspects. AI also has great potential in the field of intelligent helping the elderly. Whether it is community or home-based care, AI can play a significant role in providing the elderly with life convenience, rehabilitation care, helping meals and walking, emergency rescue, spiritual comfort and so on. When an old man falls down at home, how to find out at the first time, inform his family at the first time, and rescue at the first time? Computer vision technology can do a good job. With the progress of natural language understanding, this kind of smart screen can chat with the elderly for hours to relieve their boredom, and always be loyal and accompany the elderly.

AI is also expanding the living space and freedom of human beings. Just now you saw the digital human of Mars rover zhurong on the screen. This is the first digital human of Mars rover in the world developed by China Mars exploration project and Baidu based on artificial intelligence technology. With the breakthrough of machine translation technology, human beings can communicate freely through different natural languages. The breakthrough of automatic driving technology can make the car not like a car, but more like a robot. It can run faster than a person, understand people's words, and speak as well as a professional host. When the apples on the suburban farm are ripe, you can let your car robot run to help you get them back without having to work hard.

In this respect, our cognition is different from that of many people in the industry. Nowadays, many people think that a car is a big mobile phone, while others think that a car is a computer with four wheels. We think that the future of intelligent cars is more like intelligent robots, or vice versa, that is, the mainstream direction of robots in the future is more like an intelligent car.

In my opinion, artificial intelligence will undoubtedly be a transformative force influencing human development in the next 40 years. Today, this power is constantly accumulating. In transportation, finance, industry, energy, media and other industries, the application of artificial intelligence technology has given new ideas and new solutions to the digital upgrading of the industry, and even has begun to reshape the whole industry, thus affecting the future of human society.

Baidu has been preparing for this change for many years. Our autopilot technology is in the global technology leadership camp. Not long ago, baidu just launched a new generation of shared unmanned car Apollo moon, aiming to make travel cheaper than the current online car Hailing; In the next 2-3 years, we plan to fully open the shared unmanned vehicle service to 30 cities in China to serve a wider range of users; Our latest smart car is also under rapid development. It is estimated that you can experience a more robot like car in 2-3 years.

Baidu ace traffic engine has been launched in more than 20 provinces and cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing. With the help of the embroidered digital intersection and intelligent transportation operator mode brought by ACE intelligent transportation engine, Chinese cities are building world-class intelligent transportation system clusters.

From a more macro point of view, intelligent transportation system is a microcosm of future digital city operation. We are very familiar with the operator mode of airport, high-speed railway and telecommunication network, but at present we have no operator of digital city. I think the digital city operator mode assisted by AI technology will be a good solution. Through AI new infrastructure, we are confident to further contribute innovative solutions to the digital transformation of industry and city.

The change that artificial intelligence brings to the industry and society is ultimately to serve people. The value of artificial intelligence is to help people, teach people to learn, and let people grow, rather than surpass and replace people. Only when technology serves people and society, and produces more positive value and contribution, can it be truly meaningful.

In the field of intelligent helping the elderly, we are also taking action. I once heard a story told by my colleagues: in Baidu intelligent public welfare pilot community, every home of the elderly is equipped with customized small smart screens, which can be used by the elderly to play music, video, online shopping and spend their leisure time; You can also use the smart screen to check your health, master your health status in real time, do a good job in chronic disease management, and call for medical rescue remotely - smart devices with 18 kinds of martial arts skills can already improve the quality of life of grandparents.

We are making use of AI to realize such a highly intelligent scene - by intelligentizing the medical services and health management equipment related to the elderly, we can help the elderly to collect and track health care data, so as to better manage their physical conditions; Through the aging comprehensive service platform carried in the intelligent device, we can get through the community service resources and health care resources, and provide comprehensive services such as home medical service, chronic disease management and emergency call for the elderly; By popularizing the artificial intelligence assistant with voice as the core and multi-mode interaction such as eyes and gestures, the elderly can enjoy the convenience brought by the development of science and technology in all scenes of daily life.

These intelligent systems may have appeared in science fiction stories decades ago, but today, with the unremitting efforts of technology pursuers, they are becoming a reality. Baidu's mission is to "make the complex world simpler with science and technology". Our thinking about artificial intelligence has always been whether it can promote people's equal access to technology and ability, and bring more freedom and possibility to human beings. We are also working hand in hand with more like-minded partners to continue to explore more "technology for the better" path.

In the past few hundred years, the development of resource-consuming industry has been regarded as the cornerstone of social progress. However, in the next few hundred years, the progress of science and technology will be enough to support the return of human beings to a low-carbon society, which is also the initial mode of human beings getting along with nature. In this process, AI is helping human beings to make changes and will create value for economic development and social progress in more fields, such as AI assisted biological computing for the well-being of human life and health, such as reducing carbon emissions and helping carbon neutralization through AI technology innovation.

Not long ago, baidu also released its own carbon neutral target, and we promise to achieve carbon neutral at the operational level of the group by 2030. Baidu will also work with its ecological partners to help "zero carbon growth" with AI, make further efforts to achieve negative carbon emissions, help China achieve the goal of "2060 carbon neutral" and help achieve the climate goal of global temperature rise of no more than 1.5 ℃.

For a long time, we regard the exploration of artificial intelligence as a journey like a sea of stars. Today, we feel more and more that a new AI society is coming. The combination of AI technology with different people and scenes in the physical world makes it inadvertently integrate into the context of society. The convenience brought by artificial intelligence technology will eventually evolve into the integration of human and society ˙ A kind of "subconscious", in this respect, I have always had firm confidence.

As Alan Turing said, "it's just a prelude and a shadow of the future."