Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is declaring a new era. "We believe the growth opportunity driven by AI services have just begun," management said in a conference call with analysts Thursday. They're claiming "strong demand" for training artificial intelligence models on the cloud — so much that they can't meet all the requests due to a shortage of processing power. Cloud is the first of the six business units that Alibaba has signaled clear IPO plans for. Cloud rival Tencent is also expected to discuss AI business plans when it reports results Wednesday. Baidu , which has its AI-powered Ernie chatbot,…