BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- More than 20 provinces and municipalities in China have rolled out a total of 30 special policies to speed up development of the artificial intelligence (AI) by the end of 2018, according to the Xinhua-run Economic Information Daily on Thursday.
These policies outlined the local authorities' efforts in the AI development and they will focus on the technical breakthroughs, build support platforms, and promote opening-up of data and application scenarios, introduce and nurture talents.
Statistics show that the scale of China's AI core industry reached 68.6 billion yuan in 2018.
According to statistics of the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE), in the whole year of 2018, the global AI core industry market scale exceeded 55.57 billion US dollars, an increase of 50.2 percent year on year. At present, the total number of enterprises in the AI industry in China has been 670, accounting for 11.2 percent of the world's total.
At the national level, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a development plan of the new generation AI in 2017.
At the recent conference about the AI development, Li Meng, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, said that in 2019, China will accelerate the AI project deployment and implementation, strengthen basic research, and increase R&D efforts in chips, tools and platforms. It will also speed up infrastructure construction, promote industry-university-research cooperation, and improve policies and regulations to promote the AI development.
"This year, China will launch a number of major projects, including the in-depth implementation of the new generation of AI projects, and strive to achieve early results," a person familiar with the matter said.
At the local level, on February 21, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a document to ask Beijing municipality to increase the AI R&D, strengthen original innovation, expand application demonstration, and strive to achieve a number of international leading achievements in AI theory, technology and application.
Subsequently, on February 25, Zhejiang authorities introduced the province's action plan for development of the new generation of AI during 2019-2022.
According to the action plan, Zhejiang will accelerate the construction of AI "1+N" industrial innovation alliance, and strive to become a leading player in the AI core technology, industrial development demonstration, and innovation development in 2022.
"In recent years, a large number of AI backbone enterprises have emerged in south China's Guangdong province, and the AI and intelligent manufacturing industry clusters represented by the Internet, big data, robotics and other high-end talent platforms have taken shape in the province," said Yang Jun, deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province.
While the local authorities are eyeing the AI, experts also warn that they should also pay attention to the issues such as repeated construction and blind investment. (Edited by Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
