As Kaifu Lee, a keen observer of AI development in China has put it, “we're now in the age of AI implementation.” While the West, the U.S. and Canada in particular, will remain ahead in AI research, those Western advances are quickly adopted in China where the massive market, a surfeit of young engineers, government support and a cutthroat entrepreneurial culture are driving industrial innovation in AI.“As pre-trained AI big models become the new technical cornerstone, the level of intelligence has significantly increased showing more space for large-scale applications from industry to scientific research,” said Baidu’s Wang.In the next few years, the construction of this new AI infrastructure is set to become one of the important pillars of the development of the digital economy and a focus of investment by local governments in China, significantly contributing to regional economic development.The maturity of such key technologies, together with big data, and cloud computing, has added momentum to automation development, with AI-enabled robots of all kinds showing potential for major improvements in real-time perception, intelligent decision-making, and optimal control.This rapid progress in technology means that in 2023, the commercialization of autonomous driving in major cities in China will see simultaneous growth in both the scope of operation and fleet size, elevating the market penetration rate of intelligent vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities to new levels."