Baidu stresses importance of LLM infrastructure, AI-native applications

As artificial intelligence-powered large language models (LLMs) are driving innovation and revolution in the cloud computing industry, more efforts are needed to rebuild the infrastructure system of LLMs and bolster the development of AI-native applications, said a senior executive of Chinese tech heavyweight Baidu Inc.

Hou Zhenyu, vice-president of Baidu said the understanding, generation, logic and memory capacities of LLMs will give birth to a new paradigm concerning the research and development of AI-native applications, while the emergence of model-as-a-service (MaaS) will significantly lower the threshold for AI applications.

Hou made the remarks at Baidu's intelligent computing conference held on Wednesday in Beijing. He said LLM is the "brain" of AI-native applications, which are expected to see explosive growth next year. Meanwhile, intelligent computing abilities will provide solid support for the operation of AI applications.

Baidu will offer the LLM-centered cloud infrastructure system to promote the commercial use of AI technology, he said, adding the company's updated enterprise-level LLM platform Qianfan has served more than 40,000 enterprise clients across various sectors including internet, education, e-commerce, marketing and automobile.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn