Throughout human history, every technological revolution has reshaped civilization. Today, we stand at the dawn of an intelligent era defined by the rapid rise of large-scale artificial intelligence models. In China, these systems are often called “big models”—a term that captures not only their computational magnitude, but also their transformative potential across science, industry, and society. Today, we are witnessing the rise of a new technological paradigm driven by artificial intelligence—what is often referred to in China as “big models.” In this manuscript, the term big model is used extensively to stay consistent with the prevailing terminology in the Chinese academic and technological community. It denotes not only models with a large number of network parameters and massive training scales, but also systems characterized by strong generalization capabilities that enable them to perform across diverse tasks and domains. In this book, the term “big model” is used extensively to reflect the conceptual and cultural origins of the idea within the Chinese academic and technological community. While in English literature such systems are often described as foundation models or large-scale models, the term “big model” is preserved here to emphasize its unique contextual meaning—the embodiment of scale, generalization, and the convergence of intelligence across domains. Looking back at the history of artificial intelligence, the alternating advancements of three waves have charted a clear trajectory of technological evolution. 

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