This fall, Robin Li took to podiums across China with a message to Chinese entrepreneurs, CEOs, and officials: “Stop building language models at scale.”
In a series of speeches, Baidu’s founder said there was “no point competing” with potential rivals in building generative artificial intelligence technology that can spit out human-like text, code and images in seconds. .
He urged the company to build apps for existing models, such as its Ernie, instead. In each of his speeches, Mr. Lee ruefully counted how the number of domestic rivals had increased further, from about 70 large models in September to 238 in November.
This increased competition is once again threatening the ambitions of Chinese exploration groups in emerging technology. Over the past decade, Baidu has tried everything from e-commerce to building a mobile operating system, before retreating under the onslaught of new entrants.
“This is a do-or-die moment,” said one engineer on Baidu’s large language modeling team. “Ernie’s success will play a decisive role in the future of the company.”
More than a dozen current and former Baidu employees who spoke to the Financial Times said Li’s leadership and culture problems had made it difficult for the group to launch new business lines over the past decade. He said that this was one of the reasons why.
Although they praised Mr. Li’s dedication to technological advancement and work ethic, they said Baidu has suffered from a lack of focus on products and high turnover, especially among its most talented staff, and said that He said it was a problem that threatened early efforts. Some added that Mr. Lee and his wife, Melissa Ma, being together in the company caused problems for his subordinates.
The company declined to make Mr. Li and Mr. Ma available for interviews. Asked for comment on specifics before publication, Baidu said: “This article presents a highly biased and factually inaccurate portrayal of the company and its CEO.”
Baidu commented on the claims of those who declined to remain anonymous because it is impossible to “verify their claims or identify any personal biases that may influence their accounts.” I warned you that you can’t.
Ma’s return
Baidu was once known as the “B” in Chinese Big Tech, along with Alibaba and Tencent. But over the past decade, while the sales of its two rivals have soared, Baidu’s sales have increased only slightly.
About five years ago, Marr returned to help repair the ship. Officially given the title of special assistant to her husband, her authority within the company soon exceeded her modest title. She is currently involved in investments, talent management and recruiting, according to people close to the company.
Since his return, Mr. Ma has received an average of about $1.7 million annually in stock compensation, according to Baidu’s SEC filings. She is also the second-largest shareholder by voting power, and she has sold $500 million worth of her shares since 2020, according to data provided by the Washington Service.
Baidu did not provide details, but said the details about Mr Ma that the FT provided to it contained “numerous factual errors”. The company said she provided advisory services to Baidu’s human resources department and was not involved in day-to-day operations or core management.
“It is false to suggest that Mr. Ma is an executive officer of Baidu based on his stock-based compensation,” the company added.
Multiple staff members said the marital relationship sometimes required complex decision-making. “It’s like there are two factions,” said one employee. “Sometimes we disagree and sometimes we’re evenly matched.”
Ma’s return follows one of Baidu’s star hires, Lu Qi, an AI expert whom Li poached from Microsoft in 2017 to run the company’s day-to-day operations as president and chief operating officer. Two people familiar with the matter have revealed that he also contributed to his retirement. Case.
Lu “didn’t know who to deal with, whether Robin was the boss or Melissa was the boss,” one of the people said. He left the company after 16 months. Baidu said Lu left “to deal with personal family matters.” Mr. Lu did not respond to requests for comment.
More than 20 executives at vice-president level and above have rotated through the company since 2017, according to the FT’s survey of public retirements.
Baidu says, “We believe that every talented individual can reach their full potential,” and that “this strong and empowering culture is what helps us retain our core talent over the long term.” It’s helpful,” he said.
Switch focus
The strategic impasse undermined many of Baidu’s business goals. A former middle manager attributed the frequent course corrections to Mr. Lee’s preoccupation with technology rather than making money.
A manager who ticked off some of the projects Baidu has attempted said: [Li] Realizing that we don’t have much benefit from technology, he decided it was just business and lost interest. ”
The company is now resetting its ambitions for intelligent drive units in the face of regulatory headwinds and a crowded market.
Baidu has repeatedly promoted the introduction of “fully driverless” robotaxis in cities such as Beijing and Wuhan in recent years, but Chinese authorities still require human drivers to remotely monitor all rides and self-driving taxis. This is hurting the economic efficiency of
When the FT visited the group’s self-driving center in Beijing over the summer, remote safety monitors were installed in arcade-like driving simulators, allowing users to override Baidu’s self-driving software by stepping on the brakes or holding the steering wheel. I was preparing to do it.
The group’s own electric vehicle plans stalled in the fall, forcing Baidu to change the name of its first consumer car and hand over control to partner Geely Automobile in order to gain regulatory approval to begin production. It was done. Baidu hopes the car will spark interest in self-driving software from other automakers.
As Mr. Lee shifted his focus to large-scale language models, layoffs began, with several car executives leaving the company. In November, Lee reappointed Li Zhenyu, the department’s longtime head, to a rotating role as assistant and chairman of the Technology Ethics Committee.
“Resources are being shifted to Ernie,” said one person close to the self-driving project. Two employees said the shift also includes many of the self-driving car teams’ powerful Nvidia chips.
Long journey to Ernie
Li’s determination to build Baidu into an AI giant was evident at least a decade ago when he led the group in a bid for DNNresearch, a startup founded by AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. Hinton was eventually sold to Google.
But despite spending a decade investing in AI, both Baidu and Google hit a standstill when Microsoft-backed OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022.
After weeks of staff working around the clock, the company released Ernie in March, with tens of thousands of people joining the waiting list to test the country’s first generative AI chatbot. But Baidu quickly backpedaled, creating an image of Arnie wearing a “patriotic cat” wearing an American flag and citing U.S. intelligence findings to claim that Huawei products contain backdoors. I tried to explain why.
The problem arose from the large amount of data that Baidu’s team input into Ernie’s model. Employees said much of the material was in English and came from Western open source databases.
Some Baidu staff have specifically stated that China’s powerful cyber regulator requires content produced to “embody socialist core values” and stipulates that tech companies are responsible for their output. , they were concerned that the chatbot could accidentally cross the red line of acceptable speech in China.
Staff wrote to regulators and lobbied to prevent tech groups from being held responsible for AI content. One employee said Baidu is now using other internal models to check content generated by Arnie.
Since March, Baidu has released a series of upgrades, most recently announcing Ernie 4.0, which Li claims is comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4.
However, local competition is now quickly catching up. SuperCLUE, a benchmark set by a group of AI experts that evaluates basic models that use Chinese, ranked Arnie 4.0 just a few points above rival models from Tencent and Alibaba in November.
Mr. Li told investors in November that Baidu’s powerful U.S.-made AI chips were creating a competitive moat, and that difficulties in obtaining semiconductors, data and talent could soon lead to an industry collapse. He predicted that consolidation would continue.
“We believe there are only a select few foundation models in the market, and Baidu will definitely be one of them,” he said. He predicted that “millions” of apps would eventually be built on top of Ernie, with outside groups paying for every query a user makes.
Baidu said it had “successfully” transitioned from an information services company to a leading AI company, adding, “Such a strategic shift requires courage, vision, and most importantly, time.”