Baidu supercomputer beats Google and Microsoft in image recognition test

A supercomputer developed by Chinese internet giant Baidu has beaten ones from Google and Microsoft in an annual image recognition challenge, a step forward for the company in the development of artificial intelligence.

The challenge, part of ImageNet project in the U.S, was to sort 100,000 random images into the correct category, by their content, for example recognising a lawn mower in a picture regardless of whether the mower was shown complete or in separate parts, on a lawn or elsewhere.

In a paper documenting the test, Baidu researchers said their computer, called Minwa, recorded an error rate of 4.58 per cent, beating a Google machine’s 4.82 per cent reported in March and Microsoft’s earlier 4.9 per cent.

“Our company is now leading the race in computer intelligence,” said Baidu's Ren Wu, commenting on the achievement at the Embedded Vision Summit in California on Tuesday, according to a report in MIT Technology Review.

“We have great power in our hands – much greater than our competitors,” he added.