Baidu

Baidu supports digital inclusion for women through the Baidu Women Caring Project. This includes optimising keywords relating to women in its search engine, collaborating with experts to provide online consultations on psychological problems common to women and having a special feature in the Baidu Maps app that helps breastfeeding mothers find nurseries. With these measures, it demonstrates how companies can develop innovative digital solutions to support women.

The company supports school connectivity in China by delivering voice-activated smart devices to teachers in 50 rural elementary schools across the country. The company also demonstrates support of technical digital skills.

Baidu discloses how it handles responsibility for cybersecurity within the group. It also has a dedicated team that responds to security incidents and an information security management system that meets international standards. The company has systems in place to filter out content that is harmful to children. In addition, Baidu’s voice assistant uses speech recognition to identify users aged under 12 in order to display content that is appropriate to children.

The company contributes to open innovation through Baidu Apollo, an open source operating system for self-driving cars. Baidu supports the tech innovation ecosystem through a venture fund that focuses on entrepreneurs working in artificial intelligence (AI). The company hosts a platform through which it invites innovative proposals to solve sustainability issues, providing rewards to leading proposals. It also discloses the number of women working in technical roles.

Besides Baidu’s initiatives supporting digital inclusion for women, little evidence could be found of activities aimed at universal, inclusive or accessible digital technologies. The company has an opportunity to support initiatives that enhance access to digital technologies, including for users with disabilities. It could also report how the economic value it generates is distributed among stakeholders. Additionally, Baidu could provide more information on its Baidu Women Caring Project, such as the impact of the programme and the company’s contribution.

Given Baidu’s footprint in China, it has an opportunity to support initiatives for digital literacy and intermediate digital skills development, potentially having a significant impact. Furthermore, providing additional metrics and third-party impact assessments would enhance transparency about the company’s technical digital skills and school connectivity initiatives.

Baidu reports the number of web pages it has blocked, but it could improve transparency and disclose the number of data breaches. In addition, the company’s privacy policy could include more information about the rights of users to obtain copies of their data. Finally, Baidu could make a high-level commitment to promoting child online safety and improving its reporting mechanisms.

The company has an opportunity to improve its support for sustainable development through projects involving big data; for example, by working with specific partners or providing data sets to the wider research community. In addition to its venture capital fund, Baidu could consider supporting start-ups through incubators, accelerators or competitions. The company could also disclose a clear framework for incorporating ethical considerations in its R&D activities, especially given its focus on AI.