Baidu Works Round The Clock To Meet Its ChatGPT-Styled AI Deadline; Borrows Nvidia's Powerful Chips And Other Team Members

Baidu, Inc BIDU employees are reportedly racing to meet the March 16 deadline of the ChatGPT chatbot equivalent launch, which still needs to be improved to perform some essential functions.
Hundreds of people have been working around the clock to develop Ernie Bot, the Wall Street Journal reports citing familiar sources.
Baidu borrowed staff from other teams and sought powerful computer chips, which Chinese companies can no longer buy due to the U.S. sanctions. The report adds that Baidu CEO Robin Li urged AI research teams across the company, including its autonomous driving unit, to lend their most powerful computer chips, Nvidia Corp’s NVDA A100s, to Ernie Bot’s development.
Also Read: Baidu To Integrate ChatGPT-Styled AI Into Search, Cloud, In-Car Entertainment: Report
Some employees said they did not get enough time to build a well-functioning product. Some employees said they sold some company stock ahead of the launch because of those concerns. Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google recently lost $100 billion in market capitalization after its AI-powered chatbot search produced factual errors in a demo.
Also Read: Cathie Wood 'Frustrated' With Google Search: Why Microsoft ChatGPT Is 'iPhone Moment Of This Decade'
AI researchers have said that adequately training a model of such scale with thousands of chips can take weeks or months.
Baidu scaled back the project from creating a bilingual chatbot capable of conversing in Chinese and English to one primarily focused on Chinese.
Baidu plans to roll out the product in stages. It will first be available for public testing to a restricted pool of users.
The Beijing city officials have reminded Baidu to ensure its service complies with Chinese laws and regulations.
Price Action: BIDU shares traded lower by 1.83% at $139.50 premarket on the last check Thursday.

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