At the Intel Technology Innovation and Industry Ecosystem Conference on September 22, 2026, Peking University economist Justin Yifu Lin said that because core AI large models can be obtained for free or at low cost through open source, developing countries have a latecomer advantage in applying AI in manufacturing, and the fourth industrial revolution could narrow rather than widen income gaps between countries. He also said China and the U.S. are both in the top tier of AI industrialization—with China taking a lighter-asset path based on open-source weights and algorithm optimization, and eight of the ten most-used large models globally coming from China—and compared open-source AI to the steam engine, predicting explosive growth in industrial intelligence.