Baidu COO Qi Lu to step down

I am sad to learn that Qi Lu will step down as Baidu's COO after less than one and a half year in the job.

What particularly impressed me about Qi Lu is that if you search for the transcripts of his previous interviews, you would find that he is different from other tech executives whose conversation is full of marketing narratives. Instead, he provides crisp insights into the past tech lessons, the current tech ecosystem and the future tech trend.

When you look at the following transcript excerpt of Qi Lu's interview with YC Combinator, you would know that the step down of Qi Lu from Baidu's helm is a great loss to the entire China Tech sector.

[Quote] ... data in my view is for the AI era. It will become a primary means of production. By definition, means of production is a form of capital. We look at, historically, in our human history, let’s say, in the agricultural era, land is the primary means of production. You can see everything is organized around the land. All the wars are competing for land. In the industrial eras, the means of productions are primary labor equipment, different type of equipment. And certainly, financial capitals, human talent. But in the AI era, my view is that data will become a primary means of production. Harnessing data becomes key. [/Quote] 

Reference: https://blog.ycombinator.com/baidus-coo-qi-lu-discusses-ai-with-daniel-gross/

Another piece of insightful thought by Qi Lu:-

[Quote] I worked on Cortana four and a half years ago. At the time we all were like, “Amazon, yeah, that technology is so far behind.” But one thing I learned is that in this race to AI, it’s actually more about having the right application scenarios and the right ecosystems. Google and Microsoft, technologically, were ahead of Amazon by a wide margin. But look at the AI race today. The Amazon Alexa ecosystem is far ahead of anybody else in the United States. It’s because they got the scenario right. They got the device right. Essentially, Alexa is an AI-first device.

Microsoft and Google made the same mistake. We focused on Cortana on the phone and PC, particularly the phone. The phone, in my view, is going to be, for the foreseeable future, a finger-first, mobile-first device. You need an AI-first device to solidify an emerging base of ecosystems. [/Quote]

Reference: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/baidus-qi-lu-former-microsoft-exec-explains-amazons-alexa-surprised-industry/