What's interesting about Baidu's AI model Ernie is that Baidu and its founder, Robin Li, have been working on AI for a long time. Robin Li has a strong background in AI research going back many years. Also notable is that some of the key early research on scaling laws—important for understanding how AI models improve as they get bigger—was done by Baidu's AI lab. This shows Baidu's significant role in the ongoing development of AI.
https://research.baidu.com/Blog/index-view?id=89
I am excited to see Baidu catchup. It feels like they have earned it. Being very early.