SHANGHAI, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Due to COVID-19, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2020 in Shanghai this week adopted a hybrid model where offline exhibitions and online displays took place simultaneously to showcase the latest artificial intelligence (AI) applications and frontier development. More than 500 AI experts and executives, including Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners, attended this year's WAIC held from Thursday to Saturday with the theme of "Intelligent Connectivity, Indivisible Community." Photo taken on July 3, 2020 shows the research center of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on the "AIsland" of Zhangjiang Science City in Pudong New Area, east China's Shanghai. AI has already demonstrated its potential to transform societies, economies and industries, but this is just the beginning, according to experts at the conference. WAIC plays a critical role in bringing people together to learn from one another and identify ways of collaborating to achieve more.

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.