China's AI acumen, vision to be showcased at WAIC in Shanghai amid fierce race with US
artificial intelligence (AI) prowess, as well as its vision of how to manage the disruptive technology, at a conference in Shanghai as the country is stepping up its competition against the US for AI supremacy.
The annual three-day World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), which starts on July 26, would showcase more than 3,000 hi-tech products, 40 large language models, 50 AI-powered devices and 60 intelligent robots, according to the organisers. Most of the displayed AI solutions and products were developed by Chinese institutions and businesses, they added.
A high-level meeting on global AI governance will be held in tandem with the conference to promote Beijing's view on how to regulate AI. In particular, the event would push 'Chinese wisdom' to the world by promoting China's open-source approach to AI, which has gained momentum thanks to models from
DeepSeek and
Alibaba Group Holding , said Du Guangda, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at a briefing in Shanghai on Thursday.
The WAIC, hosted by Chinese government ministries and the Shanghai municipal government, has become a key venue for China to ramp up its relevance and influence in the international AI industry. In his speech at the G20 leadership summit in Brazil in November, President
Xi Jinping invited the G20 members to attend the conference.
The gathering this year would attract 800 enterprises, including Siemens and Schneider, according to the briefing, though organisers have not yet released a detailed list of participants and speakers.
In past years, the speaker list included Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Tencent Holdings' chairman Pony Ma Huateng and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, who attended in person in 2019 and delivered video speeches in 2020 and 2023. Premier Li Qiang attended the opening ceremony and delivered a keynote speech in 2024.
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