A visitor speaks to Baidu's robot Xiaodu at the 2015 Baidu World Conference in Beijing, Sept 8, 2015. Xiaodu, an artificial intelligent robot developed by Baidu, has access to the company's search engine database and can respond to voice commands, says Baidu. [Photo/Agencies]

Artificial intelligence

Usually what heavyweight market players such as Baidu are betting on represents the trend of China's Internet landscape.

Therefore there was little surprise whey many believe the study of artificial intelligence (AI), or the intelligence exhibited by machines or software, is a field people can look up to in the next couple of years when Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li said the company is investing big on it.

Baidu, China's major search engine provider, has applied AI technology to vehicles. Li said self-driving cars will be quite common on the roads in three to five years.