灯光阑珊处，愿君重登青云路 | 经济学人
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思维导图作者：
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英文部分选自经济学人202300909商业板块
Business | AI with Chinese characteristics
Meet Ernie, China’s answer to ChatGPT
文心一言，中国版的ChatGPT
Baidu’s bot is catapulting its maker back to stardom
灯光阑珊处，Ernie愿君重登青云路
A decade ago Baidu, as the operator of China’s largest search engine, was at the centre of the country’s internet. Together with Alibaba and Tencent, China’s two most valuable internet businesses, it formed a triumvirate known as “BAT”. With foreign search engines banned or heavily censored in China, it faced little competition in its core business.
十年前，百度（Baidu）作为中国最大的搜索引擎运营商，雄踞中国互联网中心，与阿里巴巴（Alibaba）和腾讯（Tencent）这两家市值最高的中国互联网公司三足鼎立，形成互联网“三巨头”，人称“BAT”。国外搜索引擎要么被禁用，要么返回捞干筛净后的结果，因此百度在核心业务上几乎没有竞争对手。
Baidu never lost its dominance of Chinese search; it still enjoys more than 90% of search traffic in the country. Yet shifts in the technology landscape have left the company a shadow of its former self. Most Chinese internet users now trawl the web with the help of super-apps such as Tencent’s WeChat. Advertising dollars have shifted to apps like Douyin, the Chinese cousin of TikTok. Meituan, a delivery platform, and Pinduoduo, an e-commerce firm, have surged past Baidu’s market value of $50bn. In an effort at emulation, it launched its own delivery and shopping offerings, along with other services such as payments and social media. These mostly flopped. The company’s market capitalisation is now equivalent to one-eighth of Tencent’s, down from one-fifth five years ago (see chart).
在中国，百度搜索引擎霸主的地位从未被撼动，搜索量至今仍占九成以上。然而，科技领域洗牌式发展，百度却被挤在昔日辉煌的背影之后唏嘘。现在，大部分中国网民搜索信息时，都是用超级应用程序（app），比如腾讯微信。广告收入转而流向抖音（国内版TikTok）等app。外卖平台美团和电商拼多多的市值激增，超过了百度的500亿美元。百度见状也推出外卖和购物业务，以及支付和社交媒体等服务，基本以失败告终。百度市值五年前相当于腾讯的五分之一，现在仅为八分之一（见上图）。
Baidu’s rollout of AI, however, is reigniting excitement about the company. Ernie was downloaded 1m times within 19 hours of its release (ChatGPT reached 1m downloads after five days, according to its American maker, OpenAI). Baidu’s share price rallied by more than 4% on the day of release, as analysts, investors and common folk bombarded the bot with questions. Although four other firms, including SenseTime, a facial-recognition business, launched similar services on the same day, and six others have been granted approval by China’s government, Ernie is generating the most buzz.
然而，百度推出的AI产品，又燃起了市场的期待。“文心一言（Ernie）”发布19小时内，下载量就达到了100万次（根据ChatGPT的开发者美国OpenAI公司的数据，其在发布五天后下载量才达到100万次）。在发布当天，百度股价回升超过4%，分析师、投资者和网民纷纷向这个AI机器人发起狂轰滥炸式提问。文心一言发布的同一天，人脸识别公司“商汤科技（SenseTime）”等四家公司也发布了类似服务，另有六家公司也已获批可上线其AI服务，但是还属文心一言风头最盛。
Last month Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive and co-founder, said that the roll-out of AI had been a “paradigm shift” for the company. That shift did not, however, happen overnight. Years of investment have turned Baidu into one of China’s most sophisticated AI companies, with a system that encompasses chip design, a deep-learning framework, and proprietary AI models and applications. The company started building Ernie in 2019, making it one of the earliest firms anywhere to experiment with such “generative” AI.
百度CEO及联合创始人李彦宏于上月表示，推出人工智能服务于百度而言，就是一场“范式转变”。然而，这种转型并非一蹴而就。百度已深耕多年，在国内人工智能界属于佼佼者，建立了一套覆盖芯片设计、深度学习框架以及百度专有的人工智能模型与应用等领域的体系。开发文心一言始于2019年，百度可以说是全世界最早几家探索研发此类“生成式”人工智能的公司。
注释：
“范式转移”是指一个领域里出现新的学术成果，打破了原有的假设或者法则，从而迫使人们对本学科的很多基本理论做出根本性的修正。例如，当人们发现地球是圆的而不是平的后，之前对地球上所发生的各种现象的理解全部都要重新考虑。
So far Baidu has shied away from giving explicit guidance on what the technology will mean for its bottom line, but analysts believe Ernie will drive more traffic to its search engine and other services, raising advertising revenues. Baidu has also cemented itself as China’s largest AI cloud provider, and has started offering bespoke services for companies that want AI models tailored to their specific needs.
关于文心一言对公司盈利的贡献，百度尚未发出明确的业绩指引。不过分析人士认为，文心一言能为公司的搜索等多项业务引流，提振广告收入。百度也再次巩固了其作为国内最大的AI云供应商地位，开始提供面向不同公司需求的AI定制服务。
注释：
在财报中，top line代指总收入revenue，bottom line代指收益profit，guidance被称为未来指引，即公司对于未来收入、销量、盈利等方面的预测展望。
Enthusiasm for Baidu’s other important foray into AI, an autonomous-taxi business, is more muted. The service has been launched in a few cities across China, allowing users to hail robotaxis via a mobile app. But trips must still be monitored remotely, and a wider roll-out could be years away. Few analysts expect the unit to generate meaningful profits soon.
百度在人工智能领域的另一重要举动是无人驾驶出租车业务，但是没什么热度。目前，这项业务已经在中国数个城市落地，用户可以用手机APP打车。然而，每辆无人驾驶出租车的背后还是需要人工远程监控。要想实现更广市场覆盖，恐怕还需数年。分析人士大多不看好这项业务能在短期内为百度带来丰厚利润。
Much of what comes next for Baidu will depend on policymaking in Beijing and Washington. Restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductors to China imposed by President Joe Biden’s administration are causing the company a world of pain. Almost all of those chips, which most AI builders use to train their models, are produced outside China. Using a larger quantity of lower-powered processors is possible, but expensive.
百度未来会发展成什么样，主要还得看两国高层。拜登政府限制向中国出口先进半导体，搞得百度的日子很不好过。大部分公司在AI建模时用于训练模型的芯片，几乎都靠进口。使用国产芯片也不是不行：算力低，那就量来凑，但是这样一来成本就太高了。
In Baidu’s case, its AI efforts rely on the Kunlunxin chip. Although it designed the chip itself, production is outsourced to companies like TSMC, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer. America’s restrictions put limits on the types of chip that foreign foundries can sell to Chinese firms, and no domestic supplier has been able to produce such advanced components. Since America’s restrictions were announced, Baidu has been downplaying the importance of the Kunlunxins, which may hint that it is having problems procuring them.
比如，百度的AI业务用的是昆仑芯。芯片是自主设计，但生产是外包，由台积电等代工。美国禁令使得海外芯片公司无法代工某一类芯片，而国内又没这个技术。自从美国发布了限制政策，百度就不再侃侃而谈昆仑芯的重要性，可能就是因为买不到昆仑芯了（������）。
China is trying to catch up in the manufacture of advanced chips. On August 29th Huawei, a maker of telecoms-gear clobbered by American sanctions, began selling a 5G smartphone that, after being dismantled by analysts, appeared to contain unexpectedly advanced Chinese-made silicon (albeit not quite cutting-edge).
中国正在努力，想走上高端芯片制造的前沿。8月29日，饱受美国制裁影响的电信设备制造商华为开始销售一款5G手机。分析师拆机后发现这款手机或使用了中国自主制造的芯片，他们没有想到中国竟然已经具备了这样先进的技术水平（虽然还不算精坚）。
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Alfredo，小小少年，很多烦恼
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Hannah，女，做个废柴，保持愉快
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