Key facts
- Li said companies should put AI agents into sales, customer service, research and operations rather than use AI only for individual productivity.
- Li compared the current stage to industry replacing a motor without redesigning the factory, per Dahe Cube.
- Li split jobs into "builders" who create products or services and "sellers" whose work depends on communication and trust, TechNode reported.
- Baidu said daily active internal AI agents rose from about 5,000 to 37,000 over the past year.
Baidu founder Robin Li said on November 12 that the commercial adoption of artificial intelligence is "only starting," and called for companies to make greater use of AI agents, speaking at the Baidu World 2026 conference in Beijing, Nikkei reported.
Li argued that companies should not treat AI only as a tool for individual productivity, but should put agents and digital employees into sales, customer service, research and operations, and redesign their organizations around the technology, according to the Chinese-language report by Dahe Cube. He compared the current stage to the industrial era, saying firms had replaced the motor without redesigning the factory.
TechNode reported that Li set out three principles for what he called an "intelligent organization": organizing work around tasks that cross job boundaries, documenting employee know-how so teams and AI agents can reuse it, and measuring the results of each workflow so it can be improved. Li also said jobs would increasingly fall into two groups, "builders" who create products or services and "sellers" whose work depends on communication and trust.
Li pointed to Baidu's own operations as an example. According to Baidu, the number of AI agents active daily inside the company rose from about 5,000 to 37,000 over the past year, while the tasks they completed each week increased from 84,000 to more than 1 million, TechNode reported.