The World Artificial Intelligence Conference, or WAIC, will open in Shanghai tomorrow. The World Artificial Intelligence Conference, or WAIC, China's top AI event, will open on Thursday, with leading business executives participating and new tech innovations and products making debut. As the first batch of restarted exhibitions and conferences in Shanghai following the lift of the city's COVID-19 lockdown in June, the three-day WAIC 2022 will see strict pandemic prevention measures in place. As a result, many events will be held online with metaverse innovations. Scientists and business executives, including Huawei's rotating chairman Ken Hu and Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon, will attend the opening session tomorrow morning.

Just a year ago, this natural peninsula located at the heart of the Zhangjiang Science City, a high-end zone located in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, was just a humble place of swaying reeds and wild flowers. Now, it has emerged as a burgeoning test bed for China's artificial intelligence (AI) industry: an area with 20 office buildings, equipped with Alpheus smart recycling bins, Infineon smart road lamps and Slamtec security robots, all busy doing their jobs autonomously. But for its planners, this is only the beginning. In April 2018, Zhangjiang Science City released its blueprint to build an AI island that concentrates digital projects in an array of fields, including AI, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), and then apply these technologies across the region. The move comes as part of Zhangjiang's efforts to become an "Intelligence Valley" for the high-tech zone which has already earned its reputations as China's "Medicine Valley" and Shanghai's "Silicon Valley." With AI companies pouring in over the past year, a multi-layered AI ecosystem is taking shape, becoming a new driver for the industrial upgrade of Zhangjiang Science City, as well as that of the wider Pudong New Area.