The 'Crazy' Pace of Chinese Tech Company Baidu

Two years into his gig as chief scientist for Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc., Andrew Ng, the former Google executive who founded the company's artificial-intelligence unit, is pushing Baidu to become a leader in artificial intelligence. "Baidu is clearly playing on the highest levels on the global stage and that takes real innovation," Mr. Ng said. "Frankly there aren't other Chinese companies I bother to benchmark us with." Leading a team of about 800 employees, Mr. Ng says Baidu has become a leader in high-performance computing that has allowed the company to be among the upper echelon of tech firms to apply deep learning -- where computers learn by themselves -- to internet search, improve speech recognition, and develop autonomous-driving cars. Mr. Ng spoke with The Wall Street Journal from Baidu's offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., about data as one of the company's strongest assets, where Chinese tech firms are ahead of U.S. firms, and what it's like to work for a fast-moving Chinese internet company.