WAIC 2020 to be held in Shanghai in July
Wu Qing, Vice Mayor of Shanghai, gives a speech at WAIC 2019.
The 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference will be held in the city in July, city government officials said during the closing ceremony of the WAIC on Saturday.
“The WAIC event has become a grand meeting and industry festival. Shanghai will hold 2020 WAIC in July,” vice mayor Wu Qing said.
The conference reinforces Shanghai’s leading role in new technology amid plans to turn the city into an AI global hub, with a first-class AI ecosystem.
New policies, investments and AI applications were announced during ceremony, including 19 AI applications which get government support and 33 projects signed during WAIC to boost Shanghai’s AI developm6ent.
The annual event was launched last year to boost AI cooperation and innovation globally.
With the theme of "Intelligent Connectivity, Infinite Possibilities,” the three-day WAIC attracted 240,000 attendees, compared with 170,000 last year.
More than 520 speakers shared their opinions in 12 themed forums covering finance, education, 5G, intelligent algorithms, chips and smart hardware, according to Wu.
Those speakers include two Nobel laureates, two Turing Award winners, IT scientists and business leaders coming from Alibaba, Tencent and Tesla, as well as AI unicorns like SenseTime.
More than 100 new products and technologies debuted during this years WAIC, such as robots, 5G products and AI translators, Wu added.
Those technologies and devices were showcased in the exhibition halls covering 15,000 square meters in the Pudong New Area and Xuhui District. On Saturday, visitors queued up around the exhibition space in Pudong for more than an hour to get in.
More than 300 exhibitors attended the WAIC, including Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, China Mobile, Alibaba and Tencent. Outdoor exhibitions and testing were held, including self-driving cars and trucks.
