Baidu and China Machine Learning

How Chinese Internet Giant Baidu Uses AI And Machine Learning - Forbes.  By Bernard Marr.

"  .... Chinese firms such as Baudu and Alibaba, on the other hand – as well as a monopoly on gathering personal data in their home market - can collect data of US and EU consumers in the overseas markets in which they operate. Given China’s huge population, it’s clear that Baidu is in an advantageous position here, when it comes to Big Data projects involving huge scale behavioural datasets. On top of this, China’s rules and regulations around transferring and selling personal data are generally considered to be less robust than those of the US or EU. This means huge amounts of “grey market” data is available to Chinese countries for very little cost. .... " 

AI as the New Electricity

In Inc.
   
VIDEO  • IDEA LAB

Andrew Ng: Why Artificial Intelligence Is the New Electricity
Andrew Ng, chief scientist at the Chinese web services company Baidu, explains to Inc. reporter Salvador Rodriguez why breakthroughs in machine learning will transform countless industries. ... " 

Baidu AI, Augmented Reality and The Du Series

Note also Baidu's work on Virtual Assistants.   Its a natural connection to AR, since the augmentation can include required levels of assistance.  Don't see why other practitioners of the space do not combine the two.   The Pokemon explosion has alerted people to the possibilities of visual augmentation.    Another layer of augmentation is possible today.

Baidu Is Bringing Intelligent AR to the Masses
An augmented-reality system powered by computer vision and deep learning will add an extra layer to the real world for millions of people.   by Jamie Condliffe   

The Chinese Internet giant Baidu has announced a new AR platform that will allow people to make use of the technology from within many of the company’s own apps.

The system, called DuSee, is claimed to make use of "sophisticated computer vision and deep learning" to “understand the 3-D environment, and create virtual objects that have rich interactions with the user and the real world.” The platform seems to sit somewhere between basic AR systems, like those used in Pokémon Go, and more advanced technologies, such as Google’s Tango. The former simply drops animations onto a device’s screen to make it look like they’re in situ without any analysis of the real world; the latter uses special 3-D camera technology to map the local environment and overlay visual graphics.

Instead, DuSee seems to make use of a smartphone’s single camera, using computer vision software to detect and interpret what it sees in order to add a layer of extra information for the user  ... " 

See also Duer, DuLight and DuSee ...  Apparently other Du- efforts of Baidu.

Conversational Voice Bots From Baidu

Considerable work done by Chinese company Baidu in voice interfaces, with indications of Bot like interaction to AI.  A good group to follow.  They have a huge test bed of possibilities.  Have yet to see a demo of their approaches.  Especially how voice links to conversation and knowledge.  See the Baidu links below.  (Send me more).

" ... Last November, Baidu reached an important landmark with its voice technology, announcing that its Silicon Valley lab had developed a powerful new speech recognition engine called Deep Speech 2. It consists of a very large, or “deep,” neural network that learns to associate sounds with words and phrases as it is fed millions of examples of transcribed speech. Deep Speech 2 can recognize spoken words with stunning accuracy. In fact, the researchers found that it can sometimes transcribe snippets of Mandarin speech more accurately than a person. ..."

Baidu Big Data Lab

Big Data Lab (BDL).
" .... BDL is led by Dr. Tong Zhang. BDL focuses on large-scale machine learning algorithms and applications in areas such as predictive analytics, large data structure algorithms, and intelligent systems research. BDL’s mission is to make peoples’ lives better through big data. ... "

Baidu Understanding Crowds

In the CACM:   An approach that has been used to design retail environments.

" ... Baidu's Big Data Lab has devised an algorithm that can predict crowd formation, which researchers say could be used to help warn authorities and individuals of unusually large crowds that threaten public safety.

The algorithm correlates data from Baidu Map route searches with the crowd density of the places people search for to anticipate crowd formations at a certain place and time.

"Our algorithm is able to use crowd data from Baidu maps to predict how many people will be [at a certain location] in the next two hours," reports Baidu researcher Wu Haishan. ... "