Deep Learning & Baidu Research with Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng, the chief Scientist at Baidu & head of Baidu Research, joined us for a conversation on the exciting developments in artificial intelligence & deep learning from US to China. Sharing his story and the lessons learnt from his past experiences on Google Brain and Coursera, Andrew offered his thoughts on why he has joined Baidu to apply the most interesting aspects of deep learning into the online to offline (O2O) digital landscape in China and discuss the latest technologies and innovations in Baidu which arise from the research lab.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with timestamps included):

Andrew Ng (@andrewyng, LinkedIn, Wikipedia)
- How did he get started in artificial intelligence, and have the interest to apply machine learning to real world problems? [0:55]
- In his journey from Stanford University, Coursera and Baidu, what are the lessons that he has learnt as an academic and entrepreneur? [1:59]
- The insights learnt about the Google Brain project. [3:36]
Baidu Research, Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence [6:10]
- How did he decide to join Baidu?[6:28]
- What is his role as the chief scientist in Baidu? What are the areas of research? [8:56]
- In the last 1-2 years, there is a surge of interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, what is driving that interest given that Microsoft, Baidu and Google has started years back? [11:01]
- In his opinion, are the startups or the major corporations are leading in the pursuit of innovation for artificial intelligence? [13:20]
- An introduction to the concept of deep learning, and how it solves interesting problems in our daily lives. [14:40]
- What are the interesting applications or ideas that the teams are pursuing in Baidu research centre? [17:25]
- How different does one need to think about the text, image and videos when we switch the languages of communication, for example, English to Chinese? [19:14]
- What are his perspectives in applying deep learning to
  - The new trend of O2O (online to offline) or on-demand services that is happening everywhere (from Uber to AirBnB)? [21:00]
  - how people would interact beyond screens for example, the Baidu eye [23:33]
- People like Elon Musk and Steven Hawking has warned that AI might take over the world, and in his opinion, are these concerns over-hyped? [24:51]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Aspirus Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium) and Linkcious (and check out their other product, Chiibi). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Aspirus and sign up for their mailing list.