FATES - the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem, Simulator- is a new advanced representation of vegetation that has been developed within CLM and will be the default vegetation scheme of the CMIP7 Norwegian Earth System Model. NorESM3. In this seminar, we will discuss the additional dimensionality of ecosystem function which is embedded in FATES, the development and tuning process for the operational NorESM version of CLM-FATES, the performance of the near-final parameterization of the model and an outlook on future development, applications and the intersection with AI