China flexes AI muscle at Shanghai expo

The sixth World Artificial Intelligence Conference held at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center from July 4-7 was a demonstration of China’s position as a fast follower creating a large, diverse and multinational alternative to a US-centered AI industry.

More than 500 companies working on large language models, machine learning, the use of AI in smartphones, PCs and wearables, healthcare and other AI-enabled services, industrial AI, intelligent robots and autonomous vehicles participated in the event and showed off their products in the exhibition hall.

Most were Chinese but Amazon Web Services, Dell, GE, GM, Google, Microsoft, Tesla and Qualcomm also attracted crowds of visitors.

Chinese participants ranged from tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei and Tencent to PC maker Lenovo, telecom equipment maker ZTE, network operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, and numerous AI-related software and service providers. Text-to-text, text-to-image, text-to-video, on-device and open-source models were on display.

A special section of the exhibition matched 100 start-ups from around the world with 100 investors from venture and private equity funds, government-guided funds, state-owned enterprises and listed companies. Areas of focus included fintech, intelligent terminals, smart transport, the low-altitude economy and scientific applications.

A Comprehensive Connection Hub introduced various AI-related projects to investment institutions and procurement groups. An AI+ Application Scenarios Comprehensive Zone hosted scenario providers from China and close to 20 other countries including the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Singapore. The organizers estimate the total value of procurement requests