Baidu’s Brain Project now has the age of a 2 to 3 year old

China’s online giant is developing AI with remarkable success

Robin Li, billionaire founder of Baidu Inc and China’s third richest man, has announced that the online giant’s fledgling artificial intelligence program is making significant strides. The Baidu Brain project now has the intelligence of a 2 to 3 year old child, according to developers.

The brain is currently able to process sounds and conduct a basic exchange with a remarkable 75% accuracy rating. When performing searches in Mandarin, this figure goes up to over 90%. Furthermore, the project, which has been fed billions of reams of data, pictures and sounds, can also recognise and identify shapes and patterns.

Li predicts that in five or ten years time the internet will become increasingly integrated into peoples lives, manifesting itself in many forms like driving cars or carrying hotel baggage.

Tech companies around the world are also devoting a large amount of resources to pioneering artificial intelligence. Google recently acquired Deepmind, a complex problem-solving program masterminded by a former chess genius. However, education isn’t cheap. In 2013, Baidu invested more than 4.1tn yuan ($6.5bn) into R&D projects, a 78.2% increase from 2012 levels.

The BAT companies (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) have poured tens of billions of dollars into what some spectators have called “buying the future”. Hopefully, they will get a little more bang for their buck than 3-year-old hotel stewards.