Demonstration of the Apollo system at the Baidu World 2017 event. /CGTN Photo
Ealier this month, China's Ministry of Science and Technology identified four domestic tech companies, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and iFlyTek, as the "national team" to boost the development of AI technology in the country.
By building open innovation platforms in four different fields, the four tech giants are expected to help the country accelerate the process to reach its goal of creating a world-leading domestic AI industry by 2030.
What exactly are these giants and what areas of AI are they focusing on?
Baidu: Autonomous driving
Baidu launched the 1.0 version of its open-source autonomous driving platform, dubbed Apollo, during Baidu Create 2017 in July as an action to take AI a step further.
The company also announced partnerships with over 60 car companies globally at the event.
According to the search engine giant, more than 6,000 developers are now using the Apollo platform and 1,700 of them have taken part in the Apollo project.
Over 100 partners have applied for the access to the open data of Apollo, making it a very active open system.
At the Baidu World event on November 16, CEO Robin Li said the platform will partner with King Long, a major Chinese bus manufacturer to produce autonomous vehicles by the end of 2018.
