On March 9, Robin Lee, the founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, pointed out in an interview with CCTV's "Dialogue" at the beginning of the new year that, basically speaking, there will be no such career as "programmer" in the future, because as long as you can speak, everyone will have the ability to be a programmer. "There will only be two programming languages left in the future, one called English and the other called Chinese."
Robin Lee: Wenxin 4.0 has exceeded GPT-4 in Chinese
Robin Lee said that Wenxin 4.0 has surpassed GPT-4 in Chinese. He used writing poetry as an example, stating that even big models like the Wenxin model can be written, but GPT is not enough. "For example, to write a poem, many big models can write it. But if I ask to write a word on the word board of" Qinyuan Spring ", GPT is completely confused. It does not know whether the first sentence is four words or five words." In the past year, the number of ERNIE Bot users has exceeded 100 million, Wenxin big model has been upgraded to version 4.0, and the restructured Baidu Wenku and other AI native applications have also achieved the improvement of various data indicators.
Since the release of ERNIE Bot, there have been some negative comments on the Internet. In this regard, Robin Lee said that he was not angry about the huge difference between ChatGPT and ERNIE Bot, and he hoped to change their ideas within a year. He said that he was very confident about ERNIE Bot. Those who can get the right to use the professional version can compare it with ChatGPT4.0.
As for the development speed of AI, Robin Lee said: "I think the development of AI is slower than I expected. AI has been proposed for 70 years, and maybe every 10 years or so, a group of people say that we are finally going to achieve universal AI. But the situation is more complicated than expected."
In response to many companies launching large models and triggering a "hundred model war", he said: I don't think there are so many people who should do the same thing, which is a great waste of social resources. Everyone is repeating their work. He also stated that he has been urging everyone not to roll up (big models), to roll up applications, only applications can truly create value directly.
In addition, Robin Lee believes that "robots in the future should not look like people, but like cars." "It is a new concept that robots can listen to people and drive themselves."
The number of ERNIE Bot users has exceeded 100 million
On February 28th Beijing time, Baidu released its financial reports for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. According to the financial report, Baidu's total revenue in 2023 reached 134.598 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%; The net profit attributable to Baidu (non GAAP) was 28.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39%. The revenue in the fourth quarter was 34.951 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6%; The net profit attributable to Baidu (non GAAP) was 7.755 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%.
In the past year, Baidu's core revenue was 103.465 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%; The net profit attributable to Baidu's core was 27.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38%. This includes a revenue of 75.1 billion yuan from online marketing, a year-on-year increase of 8%; The non marketing revenue was 28.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%.
In terms of research and development, Baidu's R&D expenditure last year was 24.2 billion yuan, an increase of 4% compared to 2022. Among them, Baidu's R&D expenditure in the fourth quarter was 6.3 billion yuan, up 11% year on year, which also reflects the increase of Baidu's R&D investment in ERNIE Bot, server depreciation expenditure and server hosting expense.
In the past year, large models have become a key keyword in the field of technology, and have also sparked a fierce "Hundred Model Battle". As an early entrant in the domestic big model field, Baidu today disclosed the relevant data of AI native application ERNIE Bot. By the end of December, the number of ERNIE Bot users had exceeded 100 million, completed 3.7 billion words of text creation, output 300 million lines of code, helped users handle 400 million words of professional contracts, and formulated 5 million travel plans.
