The chief scientist helping drive Baidu Inc.'s push into artificial intelligence is quitting the Chinese search giant, putting at risk its efforts to put AI at the center of a business revival. Andrew Ng, a Stanford University academic who worked on deep learning at Alphabet Inc. before joining Baidu in 2014, said he's leaving the business next month. Ng doesn't plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring AI into sectors such as health care and education around the world. The departure comes at a crucial point for the Beijing-based company as it attempts to revive its fortunes by embracing machine intelligence across all of its business units. His decision to leave comes after Qi Lu was hired in January as Baidu's group president and chief operating officer with a mandate to reshape the business, whose online-ad business is under threat from rivals including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Prior to joining, Lu was an executive at Microsoft Corp. leading efforts to develop artificial intelligence.