Baidu Unveils DuerOS Prometheus Project to Advance Conversational AI
November 09 2017 - 4:00PM
Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), the leading Chinese language Internet
search provider, launched DuerOS Prometheus Project today to
rapidly advance the state of conversation AI capabilities. The
project consists of one of the largest open datasets for
conversational AI, interdisciplinary collaborations as well as a $1
million fund to invest in conversational AI projects and foster
talent in this space.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d1c8c939-8fd4-43b3-92c6-1cd772b19916
“Voice is increasingly becoming how we interact with our devices
today,” Kaihua Zhu, CTO of Baidu’s DuerOS, said at the announcement
event for the project today in Redwood City, California. “Open
datasets, interdisciplinary collaborations, and financial
incentives will create the conditions necessary for rapid
advancement of conversational AI.”
DuerOS is Baidu’s conversation-based AI platform with
conversational skills in 10 major domains and over 100 sub-domains.
Since its launch in the beginning of 2017, it has quickly become
the top choice for third party hardware manufacturers in China that
have integrated DuerOS in over 100 branded devices ranging from
refrigerators and air conditioners to TV set-top boxes,
storytelling machines and smart speakers.
Dr. Björn Hoffmeister, Sr. Manager of Amazon Machine Learning,
Dr. Sanjeev Khudanpur, Director of Human Language Technology Center
of Excellence at Johns Hopkins, and Dr. Antoine Raux, CTO and
Co-founder of a Stealth Conversational AI Startup, also attended
the Duer OS Prometheus Project launch event and gave presentations
in their respective fields.
Following the event, Baidu will gradually open three large scale
datasets in far field wake word detection, far field speech
recognition, and multi-turn conversations to enable developers and
technologists to develop and train their algorithms for
conversational AI systems.
The wake word detection dataset will consist of around 500,000
voice clips of five to ten popular Chinese wake words, including
“xiaodu xiaodu”, which is the wake word to activate DuerOS enabled
devices.
The speech recognition datasets will include thousands of hours
of Mandarin speech recognition data to enable people to train
systems that can accurately “hear” human speech under complex
circumstances such as noisy environments. The project will also
release thousands of dialogue data, covering 10 different domains
to promote the development of multi-turn conversation
technology.
“In the age of AI, data is the new oil,” said Guoguo Chen,
Baidu’s Principal Architect for DuerOS. “It is also the barrier
that prevents many smaller organizations and individuals from
developing leading edge conversational AI systems. By opening our
dataset and offering interdisciplinary collaborations and financial
incentives, we hope to accelerate the pace of innovation in this
space and advance the future of conversational
computing.”
In addition to the open dataset, Project Prometheus will also
feature programs with universities and research organizations to
conduct joint training, course design, and workshops. In
combination, these programs will promote constructive exchanges
around conversational AI and attract the best talent in this
space.
The DuerOS Prometheus project is sponsored by the Baidu Duer
Business Unit, together with Baidu Speech Technology Group, Baidu
Campus Branding and Baidu Cloud.
For more information on the datasets and the $1 million
conversational AI fund, please visit
http://prometheus.baidu.com
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search
provider. Baidu aims to make a complicated world simpler for users
and enterprises through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the
NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “BIDU.” Currently, ten
ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.
Media Contact
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