Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact with each other.

Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of education startup Coursera, and Neil Jacobstein, chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Austin to discuss AI’s opportunities and challenges.

Here are edited excerpts.

MR. AUSTIN: Andrew, there’s a lot going on with artificial intelligence. What is Baidu focused on?

MR. NG: For large enterprises like Baidu, AI creates two big pockets of opportunities. One is our core business. Web search, advertising—all of that is powered by AI today. For example, we run a very large food-delivery service, and when you order food, we use AI to predict how long the food will take to get to you. That includes deciding which motorcyclist to dispatch to pick up the food, so they arrive just as the food is cooked and fresh, and they can get it to your door while it’s as hot as possible.