Shanghai has leading position on AI

Shanghai has “initially taken a leading position” on development of artificial intelligence, which boosts economic development and innovation and changes people’s daily life in near future, top government officials said on Monday.

Shanghai is going to establish its own eco-system to boost AI development to become an “AI highland” nationwide. A top-level AI event — the World’s Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) will be held in the city in August, showcasing latest AI techs and attracting executives including Elon Musk from Tesla.

“Shanghai has initially taken a leading position on AI nationwide,” said Wu Qing, vice mayor of Shanghai. “We will continue to push up the Shanghai Program on AI for future development.”

The city has unique advantages on AI development, thanks to enterprise number, world-class research platforms, various application scenes and big data volume, said senior government officials from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Ministry of Science and Technology and local government bureaus.

Currently, Shanghai has more than 1,000 AI core firms and establishes two AI zones in Riverside (Binjiang) of Xuhui and Zhangjiang of the Pudong New Area, which is a national AI innovation zone. Giants like Microsoft, Amazon and BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) have all set up facilities in Shanghai, some of them are global research centers on AI.

Shanghai has its unique advantages on developing AI, such as big-volume data resources, advanced industries like automotive and aerospace and leading research and academy resources, said Zhu Xiumei, vice director of science bureau of MIIT.

As a spotlight of the conference, WAIC will be held in the Expo Center in the Pudong New Area between August 29 and 31. AI applications covering education, health care, urban management, industrial, finance and business will be displayed in exhibition space over 15,000 square meters. Self-driving applications and technologies will be displayed in a special zone with L4 or Level 4 autonomous driving, a high-level AI features in the total five levels and much advanced compared with current L2 or L3 levels.

Musk from Tesla has confirmed to attend the WAIC event, said the officials.