What exactly is needed for the popularization of AI technology?
Wen 丨 BT Finance Zhang Jinjing
As the executive vice president of Baidu's competent side, Shen Ji was recently "intimidated" on the hot search.
On May 5, Baidu founder Robin Li announced the news of Baidu's internal executive rotation in the form of internal full letters, and Shen Shu, who was transferred from being responsible for Baidu's core business search information flow to Baidu's intelligent cloud, began to be interpreted by the outside world in various ways.
The reason is also particularly simple.
Shen Ji has been regarded as an indispensable core force for Baidu's development because he is responsible for Baidu's core business. But this time, it was arranged to take charge of the emerging Baidu intelligent cloud, which triggered some media speculation.
In the past two days, there have been a number of suspicious articles on major media platforms, and the core views are guessing what the purpose of Shen Ji's transfer is.
Some of the inconspicuous voices make people familiar with Baidu and Shen Shiver feel a little inexplicable.
"Shen Ji is very powerful, he is a doctor of computer science, from the school research direction to the later work to the entrepreneurship, without exception are related to the business of data search, and even the research direction of more than 40 papers he has published, he has also put a lot of effort into data algorithms", some people close to Baidu said that they should come out to say justice for Shen Ji.
Baidu's employees call him 'shake' at work, which has two meanings: one is that he is particularly capable, and many problems can be solved by him, a bit like Cu Ding Xie Niu finally "shakes" the flesh and bones and separates; the other reason is that he is a very gentle person, colleagues like to joke with him, only called the name not the surname has become the agreed common name for him. ”
For Shen Ji's new job, this person close to Baidu has a different view from the outside world, "which may just show that Robin Li attaches great importance to Baidu intelligent cloud, and the future Baidu intelligent cloud will quickly enter the stage of commercial iteration and landing."
Because, in his view, the most powerful thing about Shen Shu is not technical ability, "but he understands both technology and business, he can integrate technology and product side to make the best solution, and combine the needs of users to re-create commercial products that users can understand and are willing to buy." ”
In the eyes of this person close to Baidu, the latter is the most lacking thing in Baidu's intelligent cloud now.
Smart Cloud Owes "One Foot in the Door"
As we all know, Baidu Intelligent Cloud is characterized by combining AI applications with cloud services, relying on the technical advantages of Baidu Brain and Feipao platform, which can provide enterprise users with a "package" of AI technology solutions.
It is reasonable to say that after nearly ten years of development, Baidu has laid a lot of foreshadowing in the field of AI, and has accumulated a huge number of patents and constructed its own moat.
Baidu is a company with an extremely strong technical atmosphere, from Robin Li down to the leaders of various departments, everyone in addition to completing daily management work, but also to devote themselves to scientific research work, many people are carrying multiple patents.
Technology is the first step, and the market is the second step. As the first industry-grade deep learning platform independently developed in mainland China, as of now, Feipao has gathered 4.06 million Feipao developers and created 476,000 models, serving 157,000 enterprises and institutions, ranking first in the comprehensive market share of Deep Learning Platforms in China.
Looking at China's cloud industry, some companies, although increasingly strong in their technological attributes, have become too idealistic in their business behavior that should be handed over to the market. After all, many technologies, especially artificial intelligence, which is currently at the forefront of computers, are the first steps taken from the lab.
Among them, due to the logic of the technical team's thinking, the precipitation and expression of many technologies on the platform are not from a business point of view, but from the perspective of technical implementation.
This may be friendly to enterprise developers who are also doing technology, but but for decision makers who purchase the corresponding technology platforms and services for enterprise users, they cannot understand these introductions and instructions like a book.
This is actually a common problem for AI technology companies and teams.
At present, alibaba cloud, a basic cloud service, has flourished; HUAWEI CLOUD has also grabbed a position in this field with its government and enterprise security and hardware technologies; and Tencent Cloud relies on its own traffic pool on WeChat to attract market-oriented enterprises to actively enter. Baidu, which has invested in the AI field for many years, cloud services also highlight the characteristics of AI.
Therefore, the cloud service platform combines AI technology to do its own main cloud service product ideas, without any problems.
But for some time now, these tech companies have felt to the outside world as "thankless." AI technology can keep up, but its number of customers and sales just can't go up.
Because of the technology made by a bunch of "tech bulls", they are eager to guide developers into roles as soon as possible, and all the introductions and texts revolve around computer developers, but at the same time ignore the feelings of enterprise user decision makers.
Such a too professional description and technical display, of course, can not impress the decision-makers of the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises. They can't judge how these advanced AI technologies will be applied to their own business links, and how they can help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency or improve efficiency.
Baidu Smart Cloud also encountered such a problem a few years ago. Fortunately, in the past two years, whether it is the application promotion based on flying propellers or the in-depth collection of demand between enterprises, Baidu Intelligent Cloud has been trying to fill the gap between this market and technology. And such a move has indeed brought a great increase to Baidu's intelligent cloud.
In the past two years, the growth rate of Baidu intelligent cloud exceeding expectations is a good example. The problem is that these are only quantitative changes, Baidu intelligent cloud wants to be reborn as the pillar of Baidu's development, but also needs a qualitative change opportunity.
In a sense, enterprise users need a key person to help them understand the needs of their own enterprises and match the AI technology of Baidu Intelligent Cloud, so as to achieve the cost reduction and efficiency improvement of their own enterprise digitalization and AI.
At the same time, "this person" must understand both the needs of the enterprise and Baidu's technology, from which a generalized product can be formed. It also trains the sales team to help the company do a good job of consulting and consulting.
Perhaps, this is the purpose of Baidu's management to transfer Shen Ji to Baidu Intelligent Cloud.
What kind of AI do businesses need
In the AI industry, the technical team strives to achieve the solution direction inferred from the experimental results, but it is possible that these technical directions are not what the real users need, that is, the requirements are created, but not necessarily what the customer needs.
"Many times the IT department of a company is the existence of the back pot", Chen Zizhou, as the head of the technical department of a listed state-owned enterprise, believes that the board of directors made a decision to require the use of AI technology to improve production efficiency, "in just a few words, all employees in the technical department may break their legs."
In Chen Zizhou's view, the company's technical department generally does not have many permanent employees, and when encountering large projects, they are either outsourced or temporarily transferred to form a development team. "This creates a problem that new technicians don't know the company's production process and can't analyze the process to determine which businesses can be optimized with AI."
Chen Zizhou further pointed out, "The leader definitely feels that AI must be able to improve the efficiency of the enterprise, but he does not know how to do it; the employees of the technical department are not familiar with the real production links, and they really can't say which problems can be replaced by AI." ”
This has become a core problem that plagues many traditional enterprises to use AI technology to improve efficiency.
Chen Zizhou feels that this actually puts forward new requirements for cloud service providers, "In this context, if our selected partners can provide us with complete solutions and adjust according to the needs of enterprises, we are of course willing to cooperate with such partners who have both technology and commercial capabilities." ”
In Chen Zizhou's view, this should be regarded as the third round of cloud service popularization. "The first round is infrastructure, similar to server databases and the like, these cloud service platforms only need to ensure stability and provide solutions for work orders in a timely manner; the second round is a series of applications derived on this basis, especially including network security, domain name resolution, etc. After a certain stage of development, enterprises find that technology based on the Internet platform still needs to be introduced; now it should be counted as the third stage, that is, how AI + cloud technology helps enterprises enhance their own value."
Baidu Intelligent Cloud has realized this problem and began to promote the training of AI architects from 2019, hoping to indirectly solve the problem that the technical department of the enterprise does not understand its own needs by improving the overall view and planning management level of the corresponding technical personnel of the enterprise.
But this only solves the difficulties of some companies that already have ideas, and for those who "just have the concept to do it", this kind of training is still a bit thin.
"We actually need a cloud platform like Baidu Intelligent Cloud, which can sort out the current molding applications and become the logic of the industry, and we can see through the judgment of our own industry that these AI technologies should be suitable for the industry, which we can directly use."
This ability to commercialize technological products is actually what all AI companies lack at the landing end.
Why the trembling
In a sense, Baidu Intelligent Cloud has matured in the field of technology, and it lacks the ability to "kick in the door" precisely in commercialization. How to tap the needs of customers, and how to organize their own technology, form industry-oriented products to match this demand, has become the core element of the commercial development of Baidu intelligent cloud for a long time.
Coincidentally, Shen Ji was particularly good at doing these two things.
On the one hand, public information shows that after receiving his ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2007, Shen Ji joined Microsoft's AdCenter Labs (Seattle) and began his career. He later founded Buzzlabs as a co-founder. During his studies and work in the United States, Dr. Shen Has obtained more than 10 patents related to Internet search and computational advertising, and published more than 40 high-quality academic papers in international academic conferences and academic journals. This is a solid expert in the field of computer algorithms.
On the other hand, what Shen Ji is best at is commercializing technology products. Since 2019, Shen Ji has been fully responsible for Baidu Mobile Ecology Business Group (MEG), covering Baidu APP, search, information flow, Mini Program, Baijia number, cultural, educational and digital entertainment, Baidu health, internationalization and other businesses.
Shen Jied led the team to give full play to the advantages of the dual engine of "search and information flow", create a mobile product matrix of "one super and many strong", build Baidu's mobile ecology into a trustworthy content and service platform, and build a prosperous ecology.
The key in this process, Shen Jiyi changed the previous business model of simple search advertising and bidding, produced full-chain marketing solutions for more than 20 key industries, and trained sales personnel, requiring them to establish perfect program production and analysis capabilities from the perspective of customer needs.
Driven by such a systematization, Baidu MEG's annual online marketing revenue was 74 billion yuan, achieving a 12% increase, which is particularly precious for a technology company that focuses on research and development.
In other words, Shen Jitter understands both technology and user needs, and the more than 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprises he has served have formed a stable demand and satisfaction relationship with Baidu Information Flow.
Baidu's current intelligent cloud business is currently growing strongly. Relying on the "cloud-intelligence integration" strategy, Baidu's leading edge in AI computing power, algorithms, open platforms, developer ecosystems, etc., is being transformed into the differentiated competitiveness of intelligent cloud services, making it enter the fast lane of strong growth.
Baidu's fourth quarter 2021 financial report shows that the intelligent cloud business achieved a year-on-year increase of 67%, with an annualized revenue of about 13 billion yuan. From another perspective, Baidu has now formed the development structure of the original search business, Baidu intelligent cloud and unmanned "troika", and now, Baidu intelligent cloud has been placed in a particularly critical position.
Baidu management may have realized that in the future, it can take over the baton of Baidu search advertising, in addition to smart cars, the business that continues to lead Baidu's performance market is Baidu Intelligent Cloud. Then strengthening the leadership of this future core sector, solving various problems encountered in its commercialization, and promoting the business of this sector to embark on a fast track of development have become the choices that Baidu's management team must make.
Shen Ji to be responsible for this matter is an inevitable that everyone recognizes at present.
First of all, as an algorithm expert, Shen Ji, at least hassle-free communication with these "big bulls" developed by AI, and he can easily understand the logic and development direction of all AI products. In addition, Shen Jiding understands the needs of enterprises very well, and can help these project teams correct the direction of products and make them go in line with the needs of enterprises.
Secondly, because it is familiar with the various changes in enterprises, especially in business cooperation, Shen Jitter can help the intelligent cloud to commercialize the existing products, form a product system for the needs of enterprises, and promote the landing and sales of intelligent cloud AI series products.
Third, Shen Ji is the executive vice president of the group, he directly manages the intelligent cloud, invisibly raising the intelligent cloud to a special core position, which means that many resources in the Baidu Group will tilt to the intelligent cloud in the future, and accelerate the construction of Baidu's new "leading locomotive".
From a comprehensive point of view from multiple perspectives, Baidu's management chose Shen Ji to manage Baidu Intelligent Cloud, in fact, at the right time and in the right place, putting the right people in the right position.
That's all, no guess.
Of course, the prospect of Baidu's intelligent cloud, we can rest assured that we can look forward to it.
Because Baidu "trembled".
Welcome to pay attention to [BT Finance] to read more exciting content.
All rights reserved, unauthorized reproduction is prohibited! If infringement is involved, please contact to delete it.