Lingang unveils ambitious plan to foster AI industry

The Lingang Special Area will try to gather 20,000 to 30,000 professionals and 500 enterprises in the artificial intelligence sector in the next three years, according to an action plan unveiled on Thursday.

It also aims to raise the scale of its AI industry to 50 billion yuan (US$7.36 billion) by 2025, said Wu Xiaohua, deputy Party secretary of the Lingang Special Area Administrative Committee.

Lingang will build a first-class intelligent computing center, top-notch AI laboratories and an international algorithm innovation center to improve its core basic strength in the field of AI.

It will also build more entrepreneurial service platforms to make the area a hot spot for entrepreneurship.

The action plan calls for accelerating the research and development of key systems and components in the AI industry, such as software, chips and sensors.

Lingang hopes to expand the industry scale of high-end intelligent terminals, such as intelligent-connected vehicles, the largest AI terminal. It will also pay close attention to emerging terminals such as smart wearable devices, service robots, interactive terminals and unmanned aerial vehicles.

As application demonstration scenarios are key to the industrialization of new AI technologies from laboratories, Lingang will sort out application scenarios in areas such as manufacturing, urban governance, transportation and cultural tourism to help enterprises industrialize their products.

On Thursday, the Dishui Lake AI Innovation Port was launched to accelerate the development of the AI industry in Lingang.

Lin Zhongqin, president of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told Shanghai Daily that since the establishment of the Shanghai Intelligent Manufacturing Research Institute in 2015, the university has always regarded Lingang as an important base for R&D, innovation and achievement transformation.

"In the future, Shanghai Jiao Tong University will continue to play the role of a think tank to support the construction and development of the Dishui Lake AI Innovation Port and the frontier industrial system of Lingang, bridging scientific research and industrial application," Lin said.

Robin Li Yanhong, co-founder of top search engine Baidu, emphasized that intelligent transportation based on vehicle-road coordination can reduce traffic accident rate by 90 percent, reduce traffic efficiency by 15 percent to 30 percent, and promote the annual absolute growth of gross domestic product by 2.4 percent to 4.8 percent.

In the future, Baidu will give full play to its technological advantages to work with Lingang to build demonstration sites for unmanned driving, intelligent transportation and AI, said Li.