Baidu Executive Discusses Use of Tech for Solving Environmental Problems at COP15

Jackson He, the senior vice president of Baidu and general manager of the firm’s Mobile Ecological Business Group, on December 17 participated in the China pavilion for the second phase of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, otherwise known as COP15.

This is the first global conference held by the United Nations with the theme of ecological civilization. At the meeting, He said that technology is an important force in solving environmental protection problems such as biodiversity. The executive shared Baidu‘s innovative exploration and achievements in ecological protection around AI technology and platform content construction.

He revealed the technology behind Baidu‘s image recognition. The Baidu app’s photo search function can identify over 30,000 kinds of animals and plants, with excellent recognition speed and high accuracy. At present, there are more than 380,000 plant species in the world, and many plant characteristics are difficult to describe accurately in words. With Baidu, users can easily identify them. He believes that Baidu Search is a useful tool to identify alien invasive species.

Baidu also uses AR, VR and other technology to reproduce extinct species in search results, helping hundreds of millions of users understand ecological diversity. At the same time, in terms of energy conservation and emission reduction, Baidu builds intelligent transportation to promote the transformation towards a greener direction. These technologies are the result of Baidu‘s deep cultivation in the field of artificial intelligence for many years. In the past 10 years, Baidu‘s self-research investment in the field of artificial intelligence exceeded 100 billion yuan ($14 billion), accounting for over 15% of the annual research input. The proportion even reached 23% last year.

As a platform for acquiring knowledge and information of more than 1 billion users in China, Baidu insists on empowering environmental protection with content. “For provide users with access to accurate animal and plant knowledge anytime, anywhere, Baidu Baike, also known as Baidu Wiki, has curated about 400,000 entries with the help from China Scientists Association, animal and plant experts and the enthusiasts,” said He.

Baidu Baike, in conjunction with dozens of institutions such as the Publicity and Education Center of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Botanical Garden and the National Animal Museum, has launched various plans around biodiversity conservation and popular science of animals and plants. Through live-streaming, authoritative entries, short videos, AR restoration and other forms, Baidu has built a rich content matrix of environmental protection to promote public awareness.

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“In the future, Baidu will rely on AI technology and rich content ecology to continuously promote the application of innovative technologies in environmental protection, explore new forms of knowledge popularization, and call on more people and more enterprises to join us,” said He.