How AI Infrastructure Fuels High‑Quality Digital Economy Growth

The content is compiled from the Baidu Cloud Intelligence Conference on September 5, 2023, where Wang Qing, deputy chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, delivered a keynote titled “AI Infrastructure Enables High‑Quality Digital Economy Development.” It introduces the background and industry dynamics of the “AI Foundation Value Realization Whitepaper.”

The whitepaper analyzes AI as a new productive force, outlines the advantages of Baidu’s AI foundation for building next‑generation AI infrastructure, and emphasizes how this foundation helps enterprises adopt intelligent paradigms and supports regional industrial transformation, providing trustworthy AI infrastructure implementation solutions.

The speaker examines AI infrastructure from three perspectives—policy, supply, and demand—and discusses how it can promote high‑quality digital‑economy growth.

ChatGPT’s popularity illustrates how large models have shifted AI from discriminative to generative, accelerating the engineering deployment of AI and spawning new business models and industries.

First, the fusion of large models and AIGC reshapes the application ecosystem, enabling companies to build AI‑native applications and to reconstruct existing products and services with AI capabilities.

Second, large models give rise to new industry formats; cloud services are evolving from PaaS/IaaS toward Model‑as‑Service (MaaS), and specialized model‑fine‑tuning firms are emerging to bridge the last mile of industry intelligence.

Third, large models provide a new paradigm for scientific computing, moving from traditional workshop‑style methods to intelligent platform approaches.

AI drives enterprise digital transformation; according to the Academy’s statistics, by 2022, 50% of global enterprises had deployed AI applications, while China’s AI adoption reached 41%, indicating significant growth potential.

AI infrastructure relies on three core resources—data, algorithms, and compute. Platforms such as AI data platforms, algorithm platforms, compute facilities, and open‑innovation platforms deliver cutting‑edge AI services to enterprises.

Intelligent computing centers (AI hubs) are the primary form of AI infrastructure deployment, encompassing both enterprise‑level and industry‑level centers with similar technical architectures but differing operational goals.

For regions, AI infrastructure enhances economic efficiency, promotes industrial integration, and cultivates new business ecosystems, thereby boosting overall industrial vitality.

Example: Baidu Smart Cloud built an AI hub for Changan Auto, accelerating autonomous‑driving scenarios and implementing a thousand‑GPU cluster with PB‑level storage management.

Looking ahead, the demand side requires smart enterprises and industries, while the supply side must advance modular, scalable AI services to lower application thresholds and foster ecosystem prosperity.