While the robotaxi industry has hit the top gear in terms of re-accelerating development, testing, and early commercial deployment of self-driving vehicles, led by companies including Tesla, Alphabet’s Waymo, and Amazon’s Zoox, Uber has also entered the race by partnering with companies like Chinese tech giant Baidu, American electric vehicle maker Rivian, and British startup Wayve. It also is working with Waymo in some cities in the United States.

As per a Reuters report, Uber, through its three-way partnership with Nuro ⁠and electric vehicle company Lucid, is eyeing rolling out some 35,000 robotaxis, using Lucid’s Gravity SUVs and upcoming midsize vehicles, Nuro’s technology, and Uber’s platform.

Uber had previously invested USD 500 million in Lucid, apart from participating in a USD 203 million funding round for Nuro that valued the Silicon Valley-based self-driving startup at USD 6 billion.

“Uber has since made an unreported follow-on investment in Nuro significantly larger than its first funding,” Reuters said, quoting unnamed sources.

Uber has also reportedly agreed to provide additional funding for Nuro once ‌it hits ⁠certain development and commercial milestones. Together these commitments tally nearly USD 500 million.

“The first few milestones have already been met on time, triggering the release of some funds from Uber,” claimed one of the sources.

“The remaining money is tied to targets including testing without a driver, planned for later this year, carrying passengers in those driverless cars, expected by the ⁠end of this year, and ramping up the service next year,” the person stated further.

Talking about Nuro, the startup initially made small ⁠delivery bots before pivoting to licensing its self-driving software to carmakers and mobility companies in 2024. The company is currently testing with safety drivers, eyeing a launch in the San Francisco Bay Area by the end of 2026. Apart from Uber’s backing, Nuro is also supported by investors including Nvidia and SoftBank.

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The country’s leading search engine company, which also provides a wide variety of other internet-based services like Baidu App, Baidu Baike, iQIYI and Baidu Tieba, has now entered the list of tech firms shifting their focus to the commercialisation of large language model (LLM) applications to rival OpenAI’s GPT.

At the annual Baidu World Conference, CEO Robin Li introduced I-RAG, a text-to-image technology that leverages Baidu’s search capabilities to address the “hallucination” issue, referring to generating images that deviate from the input text or contain non-existent elements. Li also said Baidu’s Ernie platform now handles 1.5 billion user queries and interactions daily, a significant increase from the 200 million daily requests reported in May 2024. These interactions include tasks like generating text, answering questions, and assisting with various applications utilising AI.

Baidu’s commercialisation efforts have largely revolved around its AI agents, which allow users to create their own applications. The technology has also gone into the company’s existing product lineup. Meanwhile, among other announcements, Baidu also unveiled a pair of glasses featuring a built-in AI assistant, developed by its hardware division, Xiaodu.

The gadget is equipped with cameras to capture photos and videos and supports voice interactions powered by Ernie. However, Robin Li told the media that the Chinese tech conglomerate was not aiming to create an AI-powered “super app,” signalling a divergence in strategy from rivals like ByteDance, which has launched multiple standalone AI apps in 2024.

Baidu also introduced Miaoda, which utilises its LLM capabilities to generate code, allowing users to develop software applications without extensive coding expertise. As per Robin Li, Xiaodu’s smart glasses would “become a private assistant” for the users. The glasses will enable wearers to track calorie consumption, ask questions about their environment, play music and shoot videos.

Despite China lagging behind the United States in developing the most powerful large language models, experts believe that the Chinese tech groups can leverage the country’s sophisticated electronics sector to develop competitive consumer hardware integrated with AI.

Baidu’s entry into the smart glass market comes at a time when American tech giants like Meta and Snap are rushing to dominate the wider global market. Meta has teamed up with Ray-Ban on a series of smart glasses, with a pair selling for as much as USD 379. However, these products are not available for sale in China. Baidu’s smart glasses, on the other hand, are expected to go on sale in China in 2025.

While Xiaodu has embedded Ernie Bot into existing products, including a virtual dashboard for families to help monitor elderly relatives, who can talk to AI doctors and receive reminders to take medication through a device, other Chinese tech companies are coming up with innovations. In October 2024, TikTok owner ByteDance launched its first pair of earbuds, which allow users to talk directly to the company’s Doubao chatbot without using their smartphone.

“The magic that Chinese technology companies have consistently displayed is coming up with compelling consumer products at competitive price points. This will give them an edge over foreign companies in integrating AI into useful applications at scale,” said Paul Triolo, partner and global tech policy lead at consultancy Albright Stonebridge Group, while interacting with the Financial Times.

Who Is Robin Li?

Robin Li Yanhong is a Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of Baidu. As of June 2023, his net worth (estimated by Forbes) stood at USD 8.6 billion.

He studied information management at Peking University and computer science at the University at Buffalo. In 1996, he created RankDex (the leading internet search provider from 1996-2001 until Baidu was launched in China). In 2000, he founded Baidu with Eric Xu.

Robin Li has been CEO of Baidu since January 2004. The company was listed on NASDAQ on August 5, 2005 and in 2007, made its debut in the NASDAQ-100 Index.

During the 1990s, Li worked in IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones and Company, where he helped develop a software programme for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. He also worked on improving algorithms for internet search engines. In 1996, while at IDD, Li created the Rankdex site-scoring algorithm for search engine page ranking. Google co-founder Larry Page filed a patent for the PageRank search algorithm, in 1998, which referenced Robin Li’s work on RankDex. He later used the same technology for the Baidu search engine.

Robin Li also worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer internet search engine company, from 1997 to 1999. During this nearly three-year stint, he invented the picture search function used by Go.com. Since Baidu’s inception in January 2000, under Li’s visionary leadership, the company has transformed itself into the largest Chinese search engine, with over 80% market share by search query, and the second largest independent search engine in the world.

In 2001, Li was named one of the “Chinese Top Ten Innovative Pioneers”. In 2002 and 2003, he was named one of the “IT Ten Famous Persons”. In April 2004, he was named in the second session of “Chinese Software Ten Outstanding Young Persons”. In December 2005, he was named one of the “CCTV 2005 Chinese Economic Figures of The Year”.

In August 2014, Li became the co-chair of the Independent Expert Advisory Group on Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.

Li’s Take On AI-Powered Tech Sector’s Future

The Baidu boss, in October 2024, proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, apart from predicting a massive wipeout of AI start-ups when the “bubble” bursts.

“The most significant change we’re seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models. I think over the past 18 months, that problem has pretty much been solved – meaning when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer,” he stated during the Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference.

Describing the AI sector going through an “inevitable bubble” kind of phase, similar to the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, Li remarked further, “Probably one per cent of the companies will stand out and become huge and will create a lot of value or will create tremendous value for the people, for the society. And I think we are just going through this kind of process.”

Robin Li’s remarks come at a time when Generative AI has remained a hot topic following its initial (post-2022) surge, driven by companies like OpenAI and Nvidia. Talking about Nvidia, the venture which produces the hardware that most AI companies depend on, is now giving a tough fight to Tim Cook-led Apple in the race to become the world’s most valuable company. Other tech giants like Microsoft (principal backer of OpenAI) and Google are also integrating AI into nearly all of their future products.

He also believes the AI market will become quieter but healthier in 2024. Although some businesses and investors maintain high hopes for AI, others are showing more caution.

A September 2024 report from IDC Research shows that people aren’t purchasing PCs with AI-focused hardware due to a specific interest in AI, but rather because the latest models from major vendors come equipped with the technology by default.

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The Xi Jinping government introduced regulations in August 2023 for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with OpenAI and Microsoft while not letting its online information control mechanism loose.

Two artificial intelligence start-ups, Baichuan Intelligent Technology and Zhipu AI, also made public their chatbots.

Ernie Bot is the first domestic artificial intelligence app to be fully available to the public in China. However, the product won’t be available outside the world’s second-largest economy.

“We are thrilled to share that Ernie Bot is now fully open to the general public starting August 31,” Baidu said in a statement, as it added, “In addition to Ernie Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI: understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory.”

The chatbot was released in March 2023 but its availability was limited back then.

Baidu is expecting to gain “massive” human feedback to improve the app at a swift pace, CEO Robin Li was quoted as saying in the statement.

However, as per the new rules from Beijing, Chinese generative artificial intelligence apps must “adhere to the core values of socialism” and refrain from threatening national security.

Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi-based venture Inception announced the open-source release of “Jais”, the world’s highest-quality Arabic Large Language Model. Jais is a 13-billion parameter model trained on a newly developed 395-billion-token Arabic and English dataset.

With a name inspired by UAE’s highest peak, Jais will reportedly bring the advantages of generative AI across the Arabic-speaking world. The innovation was the outcome of a collaboration between Inception, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and Cerebras Systems. The product was reportedly trained on Condor Galaxy; the recently announced multi-exaFLOP AI supercomputer built by G42 and Cerebras.

Jais will be offering over 400 million Arabic speakers in the Gulf region the opportunity to harness the generative AI’s potential, while strengthening Abu Dhabi’s leading position as a hub for AI, innovation, culture preservation, and international collaboration.

Through Jais, Inception is aiming to engage the region’s scientific, academic, and developer communities to accelerate the growth of a vibrant Arabic language artificial intelligence ecosystem, while serving as the model for other languages currently underrepresented in mainstream AI.

Jais is also competitive with English AI language models of similar size, despite reportedly being trained on significantly less English data. The artificial intelligence tool also incorporates cutting-edge features like ALiBi position embedding, which enables the model to extrapolate to much longer user inputs, thus providing better context handling and accuracy. Other state-of-the-art techniques include SwiGLU and maximal update parameterisation to improve the model’s training efficiency and accuracy.

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It generates human-like responses to natural language inputs, making it a powerful tool for conversational artificial intelligence applications, including language translation, text summarisation, question answering, and even creative writing by analysing vast amounts of text data and learning patterns in language use, which it can then use to generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses, as per the user inputs.

OpenAI’s success has invited rivalry from other tech giants like Google, Amazon, Meta, Baidu and Tencent. However, Google’s Bard’s launch was unsuccessful, and ever since Microsoft bought OpenAI and integrated ChatGPT technology into Bing, Chrome has been suffering, and tech analysts and investors are wary about the popular search engine’s future.

Despite the red tape, Chinese companies continue to innovate and have released their AI much before American tech giants like Amazon and Meta.

Leading Chinese search engine Baidu has unveiled Ernie, a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to compete with ChatGPT.

What Are Ernie’s Capabilities?

At a live-streamed news conference organised to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology on April 13, Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li stated that Ernie (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration), known as Weixin in Chinese, was the outcome of “decades of Baidu’s hard work and efforts.”

Li demonstrated Ernie creating a conference poster and video based on a prompt at the Beijing event and recommending the finest Chinese city for the event’s location and reading material in the Sichuan dialect.

The CEO also demonstrated the chatbot answering queries and outlining the plot of a well-known Chinese science fiction novel.

The functionalities, which will be incorporated into Baidu’s Xiaodu intelligent device ecosystem, would initially only be accessible to a select group of individuals with an Ernie invitation code, according to Li.

Li claimed that although the bot can recognise something incorrect, it struggles with inquiries involving logical mistakes and performs better in Chinese than in English.

In contrast to OpenAI’s live demonstrations of ChatGPT, Ernie’s capabilities were shown by Baidu through a series of slides. Additionally, the chatbot lacks features like the capacity to produce text in response to a picture revealed in the follow-up to Chat GPT, GPT-4.

Investors did not react favourably to Ernie’s launch, and Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares dropped more than 10% during the pre-recorded demonstration.

“There is still a lot of uncertainty around Ernie’s capacity, especially given the lack of a live demo – a stark contrast to OpenAI’s GPT-4’s developer livestream a few days ago,” said Chim Lee, a China technology expert for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Obstacles To Growth

China is becoming increasingly Orwellian with surveillance cameras everywhere, state internet control, and a social credit system. Analysts wonder how artificial intelligence can develop in such a controlled environment and whether it will have relevant access to information.

However, it is believed that the restrictions placed on foreign AI will not cripple the advancements of state-compliant domestic players. As a result, the artificial intelligence sector from the world’s second-largest economy might still need to compete with global giants, but it can undoubtedly dominate and even monopolise billion-dollar domestic markets.

Baidu investors were disappointed that Ernie’s capabilities were presented on a slideshow instead of a live stream launch. It has even made people question the fundamentals and authenticity of the project.

But despite the backlash, the Chinese are determined to create AI that serves the Chinese ecosystem. Li said more than 650 Chinese institutions, including the National Museum of China, the Global Times newspaper, and China CITIC Bank, plan to employ Ernie.

The Chinese government has promised to assist regional AI creators and implement the technology throughout Chinese business. As a result, the local tech behemoths JD.com, Alibaba, and Huawei have planned to release their chatbots. Alibaba has even invited businesses to test its Tongyi Qianwen AI chatbot, as per media reports.

AI & Communist China

Given its authoritarian political system and strict control over information and technology, the Chinese government could use AI to crack down on its own citizens. Here are a few possibilities:

Social Credit System: China is already implementing a social credit system, which uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to monitor citizens’ behaviour and assign them scores based on their compliance with laws, regulations, and social norms. Those with low scores can face various penalties, including restrictions on travel, access to education, and employment opportunities.

Surveillance & Monitoring: China already has one of the most extensive surveillance systems in the world, with millions of cameras and other monitoring devices deployed in public spaces. Artificial intelligence could automate the monitoring and analysis of this data, allowing the government to identify and track individuals based on their behaviour and activities.

Predictive Policing: Artificial intelligence could be used to analyse data on crime and other activities to identify individuals who have been deemed a potential threat to the state, allowing the government to take preemptive action against them.

Propaganda & Censorship: Artificial intelligence could be used to generate and disseminate propaganda and disinformation and censor and control access to information on the internet.

The CCP welcomes the new technology and has even discussed AI’s potential in asymmetric cyber warfare. Whether to control or administrate the civilian population, cyber warfare, or give the domestic economy an edge, China knows that Artificial intelligence holds the key to its envisioned future.

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The commercial operation of Robo taxis is expanding beyond semi-closed places like Shougang Park and into more open roads thanks to ongoing technological advancement and legislative assistance, as the promotion of Robo taxis offers enormous market potential in China.

Greater advancements will be made by Apollo Go’s Robo taxis in Wuhan and a neighborhood in the Chongqing Municipality. In contrast to trials of Robo taxi services in some other cities, which need a safety operator to sit in the front passenger seat in case of emergency, these two locations announced recently that qualified operators are permitted to carry out the commercial operation of fully autonomous Robo taxis.

Shenzhen, China’s technological capital, has designated regions and road segments where completely autonomous vehicles without a manual driving option and accompanying gadgets are permitted to operate starting this month.

According to Ji Xuehong, director of the automobile industry innovation research center at the North China University of Technology, the expansion of Robo taxis’ commercial use can aid in the increased public acceptance and acknowledgment of autonomous driving as a technology.

The strong actions taken by these cities followed a number of high-level plans to support the use of autonomous vehicles for commercial purposes in China.

The country’s intelligent automotive development strategy outlines a plan for accelerating high-level autonomous driving. In some cities, pilot programs for the use of highly accurate maps in intelligent linked vehicles will be introduced to support autonomous driving.

The government has given autonomous driving safety a lot of attention in addition to a nurturing hand. In a draught report presented recently, the country’s transport ministry emphasized that “safety should come first” in the management of autonomous vehicles.

According to CITIC Securities, the market for Robo taxis is expected to reach 3.2 trillion yuan (approximately 473.3 billion dollars) by 2040, indicating that the technology is set to advance quickly.

Image Credits: Baidu

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“The future is all about smart devices that will actively serve us, not just respond to what we tell them to do,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group. “With a strong background in R&D, Huawei will work with Baidu to accelerate innovation in the industry, develop the next generation of smartphones, and provide global consumers with AI that knows you better.”

“It should come as no surprise that Baidu and Huawei are working together, because we have many similarities – technology is embedded in our DNA and we have developed our own technologies in order to grow,” said Robin Li, Baidu Chairman and CEO. “The Internet era is evolving into the era of AI. Baidu has been dedicated to the field of AI for a long time. Huawei has a large user base. Together, Baidu and Huawei can do many things which we were not able to do in the past. The Chinese saying ‘let a hundred flowers bloom’ is a good way to describe our cooperation – today we planted the seeds, and I believe soon they will grow into many flowers.”

Huawei and Baidu plan to build an open ecosystem using Huawei’s HiAI platform and Baidu Brain, a compendium of the company’s AI assets and services. The open ecosystem will leverage Huawei’s Neural Network Processing Unit (NPU) and Baidu’s PaddlePaddle deep learning framework to empower AI developers, and provide consumers with a broad range of AI offerings and new smart service experiences.

The two companies will work together on voice and image recognition for smart devices to enable more seamless human-machine interaction. They will also jointly build an augmented reality (AR) ecosystem, combining hardware and software to create a more immersive and accessible AR experience for everyday consumers.

Regarding internet services and content ecosystems, the companies will strengthen cooperation in areas such as search and feed to bring consumers a wealth of quality content with a more intuitive and convenient service experience.

Huawei is a leading smartphone manufacturer in the world. With a strong belief in the importance of customer-centricity, Huawei is actively exploring the future of smart technologies to help improve people’s digital experience, which includes innovation in the 5G, AI, AR, virtual reality (VR), and other related domains. In 2017, Huawei released the Mate 10, the world’s first smartphone powered by an embedded AI chipset, the Kirin 970. Huawei has been actively building the HiAI ecosystem based on these chips.

Baidu is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider and, since 2016, its strategy has focused on two core pillars: strengthening its mobile foundation and leading in AI. Baidu is using AI to elevate its current core business, and in parallel, building out new AI-enabled initiatives through an open platform and ecosystem approach. For the third quarter of 2017, Baidu’s feed revenue on an annualized basis exceeded $1 billion USD, and daily user time spend on its flagship app Mobile Baidu grew 15 percent sequentially, the fastest among apps in China with daily active users over 100 million, according to QuestMobile.

After a decade of rapid progress, the mobile phone industry has reached a critical point in its development, and the next generation of smartphones is just over the horizon. Interactive technologies including voice, machine vision, and AI will drive the industry forward. Originally developed to be personal tools, mobile phones will become a natural extension of the human body and AI-powered assistants for consumers. At this critical inflection point in the industry, Huawei and Baidu will continue to prioritize consumer needs and leverage each other’s strengths to form a partnership that benefits everyone.

AI is driving a new round of industry transformation. In-depth strategic cooperation between Huawei and Baidu will open up more possibilities for the development of AI and other technologies. It will help lay the foundation for a sustainable mobile and AI ecosystem, so that future technology can better understand users, better serve people, and promote better economic and social outcomes around the world.

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