Baidu follows US tech giants and open sources its deep learning tools

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have all done it -- and now Baidu's doing it, too. The Chinese tech giant has open sourced one of its key machine learning tools, PaddlePaddle, offering the software up to the global community of AI researchers. This move has become common among tech firms as they pour more and more resources into their AI work. Open sourcing your tools is a good way to attract talent, but it also allows companies to shape the development of a field that's becoming increasingly central to consumer tech, underpinning everything from voice interfaces to auto-sorting photo galleries. Baidu's big claim for PaddlePaddle is that it's easier to use than rival programs.