Yuanqing Lin, the newly appointed leader of Baidu Research, commented on Andrew Ng’s departure from Baidu. He said that Ng’s resignation definitely affected the Chinese tech firm.
“He has thorough knowledge on AI, which is definitely a loss to Baidu,” said Lin on Wednesday after a press screening of a Chinese television show demonstrating Baidu robots’ capabilities.
Lin said that he is a close friend of Ng and they have reached “100 percent trust” at work.
“We argued for two weeks over his resignation. I wanted him to remain our Baidu Research head, while I continue serving as a deputy,” said Lin. “As for his future plans, I know a thing or two about his next step. I know he’s going to pursue something he has yet to try before.”
Yuanqing Lin, who joined Baidu in 2015 to lead the company’s Institute of Deep Learning, now runs Baidu Research labs in both China and the United States. He stressed that Ng built a strong and solid AI team during his time at Baidu, and Lin is continuing his legacy and carrying out their plans on developing the company’s AI products.
Lin said that Baidu will soon roll out a slew of research results about facial recognition. “We’ll soon see some Baidu’s facial recognition products at some tourist attractions in May,” said Lin.
Baidu saw a change of leadership after Ng’s resignation with Lin to lead Baidu Research, and machine translation expert Wang Haifeng to become the head of Baidu’s AI Group.
Before joining Baidu, Lin most recently served as head of Media Analytics at NEC Labs America where he led teams focusing on computer vision research for mobile search and driverless cars. He holds a doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania.
Baidu’s AI team brings together global AI research talents, with about 1,300 engineers and researchers on staff, according to Ng’s note when he announced his resignation. Baidu’s AI Group now integrates the company’s core technologies in areas such as big data, natural language processing, knowledge graph, speech recognition and deep learning.
(Top photo from Baidu images)