Somewhat misleading, as Andrew Ng had left Google in 2012 to co-found and run Coursera. Baidu got him back into AI/ML. More details on his own blog post from 3 months ago — <a href="http://blog.coursera.org/post/85921942887/a-personal-message-from-co-founder-andrew-ng" rel="nofollow">http://blog.coursera.org/post/85921942887/a-personal-message...</a>
I found this an interesting quote:<p><pre><code> > “Frankly, Kai just made decisions, and it just happened
> without a lot of committee meetings,” Ng said. “The
> ability of individuals in the company to make decisions
> like that and move infrastructure quickly is something
> I really appreciate about this company.”
</code></pre>
That was, initially, one of the more interesting things about Google. You wanted to start a project and could get resources to run it in the various data centers relatively easily. If a guy like Ng was frustrated inside of Google by 'committee meetings' keeping him from getting things done quickly, then that says something about the current state of affairs there.
I very much enjoyed Andrew Ng's machine learning class, so much so that I was sad when the class ended. I wish him great success at Baidu.<p>A little off topic, but: Corporations no longer are loyal to employees (unless they are at the top of their field). Some countries now seem much more interested in the interests of corporations than people. Therefore, I think that it is very smart for individuals to more consider themselves as 'citizens of the world' and be very open to working for whoever pays them the most, provides the best infrastructure, etc.
FTFA:<p>[Ng said:] “The ability of individuals in the company to make decisions like that and move infrastructure quickly is something I really appreciate about this company.”<p>That might sound like a kind deference to Ng’s new employer, but he was alluding to a clear advantage Baidu has over Google.<p>“He ordered 1,000 GPUs [graphics processing units] and got them within 24 hours,” Adam Gibson, co-founder of deep-learning startup Skymind, told VentureBeat. “At Google, it would have taken him weeks or months to get that.”<p>Weeks or months? I wouldn't expect Google to get them in 24 hours, but has it really gotten that bureaucratic there?
Do you guys know that reportedly 30+% or even a half of Baidu's revenue comes from false advertisements by private hospitals and medical institutes mostly owned by companies from PuTian, a city in south China? It is literally bloody dirty money. If you can read Chinese, here is some news report: <a href="http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/medicine/yygc/20140721/2553637.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/medicine/yygc/20140721/...</a>
Baidu as a search provider did lots of immoral things, that's why these days it's so difficult to use Google because of GFW/censoship, and why Baidu is so dominant in China.
Can we just state the obvious? Chinese AI peeps left because they want to go back to China. This isn't an unusual trend, as an Chinese American, all of my cousins who came to study here abroad in US have plans to go back to China, unlike my parents' generation who came here for a PhD and stayed.<p>And even amongst my parents' generation, my uncles who have gotten PhD and tenure at US universities and left for universities in China. The reason being that they can get paid for just as much as in US, for lower living cost, a more compatible culture and in Beijing or Shanghai for better standards of living (yes before the critics jump in with air pollution, human rights issue etc., a good US wage in China could afford you a full-time personal assistant and/or nanny to do your laundry, take care of your kids, clean and cook good Chinese food and you can live in a nicer part of the city with better infrastructure than most of US lol; and you could still come out with lower cost of living).