One Chinese company is flipping the script by letting one of its biggest secrets out in the open.
Baidu has plans to share its self-driving car software with anyone, a huge boon to Chinese car manufacturers. It’s an unusual move in the highly competitive field of artificial intelligence, but mirrors China’s ambition to be a world leader in cognitive technologies.
The Internet company announced it would make the brains behind Apollo, its autonomous vehicle, an open-source project in the next few years. The announcement was made on Wednesday at Baidu’s first AI conference.
By sharing its proprietary software, instead of closely guarding it like other companies do, Baidu positions itself to potentially be a major player in the nascent self-driving car industry simply by dominating the Chinese auto market. It also means companies, like Google, don’t release their autonomous vehicle tech, they may not be able to compete, according to MIT Technology Review.
Baidu wants to start testing its Apollo software on limited-access roads later this month. By 2020, it hopes to have a fully-autonomous car driving on highways.
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