Li Yanhong: Lu Qi Can Manage All Of Baidu's Businesses

(Chinese Version)

On January 18th, TMTPost was invited to the first press conference of Baidu since Lu Qi joined Baidu. Baidu’s founder and CEO Li Yanhong also attended the conference, addressing some of the issues the public interested in.

Lu Qi, considered as the most accomplished Chinese in the Silicon Valley in terms of position, made the headline on January 17th as he joined Baidu as the COO. A legend like Lu inevitably brought up a great stir in the mass media, magnifying his already shining aura.

The decision of joining Baidu was made within one month

According to Lu Qi, he originally left Microsoft for the injuries he got from the bike accident. The bike in the accident was an AI project Lu was working on, which was a reversed bike that rides back if the rider turns the bike to left. Lu Qi figured he needed a timeout to rest, react and think after the accident occurred.

When asked about the viral Lu Qi Schedule, Lu responded that the most important thing is reaching a balance. That said, one could have enough rest to have the energy to engage work, as well as having the time to do what one loves. Individuals vary due to the age, lifestyle differences.

Li Yanhong described Lu Qi as a hot shot since lots of companies were trying to poach him after he resigned from Microsoft. It’s apparent that Lu Qi had a lot of good offers to choose from. However, Li Yanhong had known Lu for almost 20 years, and therefore had some advantages since they have influenced each other more or less. “My knowledge of AI is nothing to compare with Lu Qi,” he said.

Li Yanhong and Lu Qi started to work together in the late 90s. They began to occasionally see each other since 2004. “Lu Qi and I, and several other friends formed a regular meet-up thing. Every summer we would gather together at a hotel near the coast and talk about technology trends and the development of the industry,” Li said. “We were all inspired a lot every time.”

“It’s settled in a month,” Li Yanhong said, revealing that there weren’t much of obstacles talking to Lu Qi and inviting him to join Baidu. “I believe with Lu Qi, Baidu can climb to a brand new height in the AI era.”

In Lu Qi’s opinion, it’s quite the best time for him to join Baidu:

Firstly, the high tech industry and digitalized industry are having a growing impact on society. Social reformations are being brought up and launched one after one. Lu Qi believes the next wave of reformations will be driven by AI.

Secondly, China is an innovation hub for digitalized industry. Compared with the U.S, China has more development opportunities. Although the U.S is still the leading force in this arena, the fact that the U.S has very strong traditional industries makes the U.S harder to adopt innovations in contrast to China.

Aside from that, the foundation for high tech companies is the talent pool under all circumstances. Lu thinks that China has a group of great Internet companies. And in his opinion, Baidu’s corporate culture is technology driven, which is also shown by the fact that Baidu hired Wu Enda this year. That’s why he wishes that Baidu can be a great AI company.

Lu Qi also mentioned that there were other important incentives that got him to join Baidu other than his relationship with Li Yanhong. One is that this job will allow him to fully unleash his capacity accumulated from years of experience; second is that he can make more contributions to the industry and society to the extent he can reach; aside from that, culture also counts.

From Lu’s view, there are some essential directions for AI development and engineer culture: mass fundamental infrastructure building; building a sense for data and marking it into the corporate tradition. He believes the corporate culture is essential for company to thrive and stay competitive and maintain innovation capacity.

“All businesses will basically go to Lu Qi”

According to Li Yanhong, Lu Qi is capable of handling all of Baidu’s businesses.

“Baidu is facing many opportunities. There are still a lot of things waiting to be completed. When it comes to management, I tend to distribute power to other directors. If my subordinates have different opinions, I would try their ways first. If it ends up good, then my leadership takes some credits, and if it doesn’t go well, it does not matter. So Baidu never has problems with power distribution,” Li Yanhong said.

Li Yanhong revealed that all the businesses will go into Lu Qi’s leadership, and that he himself will be focusing on the company strategy, corporate culture and nurturing talent.

Li Yanhong stated that he still wants to build the biggest botanic garden in the world, which has been his dream for a long time. However,

“As I have mentioned earlier, even with Lu Qi by my side, there are still many things that I need to tend to. Recently, Jack Ma also said that he would be even busier after retiring. In this case, retirement might not change much. I wish to relieve myself from daily management tasks and spend more time focusing on other things, such as investment.”

Investment is not Baidu’s core business, but has a profound impact on Baidu, Li Yanhong said. Baidu currently still chooses find investment targets among its partners so as to build an ecosystem that connects the upstream and downstream. Therefore, Baidu’s investment will bee divided into internal investment, early investment focusing on AI and investment in businesses with scale.

Lu Qi: The development team should focus on both core technologies and applications

Lu Qi believes that AI can be describes in two sets of framework: The bottom framework is core technologies, which is the automated acquisition and display of knowledge powered by data. Once the knowledge collected has been displayed, then prediction and automation are feasible. Recent breakthroughs in the AI field have mostly been about sensing, which is image recognition, voice recognition and natural language interaction, including new applications of existing technologies and the new products and product categories they brought about.

The key lies in the system that should be formed during the innovation process: First innovation requires data; second, there must be a powerful system; third, the AI’s algorithm; fourth, application. Once you have the application, you have data generating. This would be a healthy innovation cycle.

Therefore, the development team must pay attention to core technologies while keeping strong application. Without application, there is no data to make new products.

Lu also believes that the U.S is still the strongest on fundamental AI research. However, he also thinks that the gap between China and the U.S, is becoming smaller and the the process is becoming faster.

The key issue here is that Chinese companies must find their advantages in innovation. China has its unique conditions, especially about data. In his opinion, data will be a new resource in the future. Whether it’s a factory, a farm field, of a hospital, they all generate a mass amount of useful data.

China has a vast land and boasts a great population, and naturally more data sources than the U.S. China’s Internet industry definitely has a fast innovation growth in the past two decades compared with the U.S.

From Li Yanhong’s perspective, Baidu possesses around six years of accumulation on AI and has stronger advantages in AI fundamental technologies. Baidu is hoping to make these technologies public in hopes of more applications will be produced by other companies instead of designing a product themselves.

“Intelligent or smart means or than connecting to the Internet and having an IP address,” he said, expressing his understanding of Internet of things. “When people can actually communicate with it, that’s when it becomes intelligent.”

“In the past, people learn the language of machines. We study C++, and JAVA etc. I expect machines to start learning our languages. Our AI technology and natural language processing technology will be implemented on every product, making them understand language and the communication between things and people more natural and fluent. This can disrupt every manufacturing industry. Whether it’s shoes makers, fridge makers or anything, will all be involved. This is the biggest fusion I see that will bound the manufacturing industry and AI.”

Li Yanhong: the biggest challenge is the lack of a good team

Li Yanhong called himself an entrepreneur. He mentioned that Baidu has been around for 17 years and it’s normal to have some bumpy roads along the journey. In his mind, one of the bad times was after the listing in 2007, when he thought he only needed to keep the CTO, COO and CFO performing well. And not long after that, his CTO left to start his own business, the COO retired and the CFO had an accident.

From his perspective, the biggest challenge is not changes of the outer environment or the competition, but the lack of a good team and having little capable people to do the things he wants to achieve. Although the team would make mistakes occasionally and there are a lot of emergent incidents, Baidu’s team gives him the confidence in continuing this path.

These are the things Lu Qi will be doing at Baidu:

Lu Qi will be mainly in charge of Baidu’s products, technologies, sales and market operation.

Baidu’s current businesses and their directors will be reporting directly to Lu Qi, including the search business’s president Xiang Hailong, the tech department and new business’s president Zhang Yaqin, Baidu’s senior president Zhu Guang(managing the finance business), senior president Wang Jin (managing the autonomous driving business), and the AI team’s Wu Enda. Lu Qi will answer directly to Baidu Group’s CEO Li Yanhong.

Since the Baidu World Conference in September last year, Baidu has been making a series of moves focusing on AI and has in fact revealed many cards the company is holding. Without a doubt, Lu Qi is pretty much like the joker card among all.

Despite all the controversies Baidu bears, Baidu’s all-in bet on AI has started. This is the chance for Baidu to prove that it’s still on the same level with the 100-billion-scale Alibaba and Tencent as a top three Internet company in China.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Zhang Lin, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.

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