AI, which analysts say will be supporting 40 percent of global digital transformation initiatives within two years with revenue surpassing $46 billion by 2020, is a battlefield where competition between China and the US has been fierce.

On Jan 8 at an event titled "AI is changing the world, China speed", Lu Qi, vice-chairman and group president of Baidu, unveiled the internet giant's autonomous driving platform Apollo and conversational AI platform Duer-OS.

Lu, a former Microsoft senior executive who returned to China in early 2017 to lead AI research at Baidu, said that AI-based innovation would ignite the fourth industrial revolution.